The Losers

Jeffrey Dean Morgan knows that two sub-machine guns are ALWAYS better than one.

(Warner Brothers) Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Jason Patric, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, Holt McCallany, Oscar Jaenada, Peter Macdissi, Ernesto Morales, Peter Francis James, Tanee McCall, Krissy Korn. Directed by Sylvain White

When you want to send in a fighting force, you send in the Marines. When you need a tougher job done, you send in the Navy Seals. When you need the impossible done, you send in the Losers.

The Losers are one of those elite fighting forces who can get just about any job done. They are commanded by Hannibal….err, Colonel Clay (Morgan) who is a cool customer except when it comes to the ladies. His right arm is Roque (Elba), a lethal weapon on two legs. Their technology expert is Jensen (Evans) who has a mouth that just won’t stop, while Cougar (Jaenada) is their quiet and intense sniper who is as deadly with a rifle as anyone you’re likely to find. The man who gets them from place to place is Pooch (Short) whose wife is about to give birth. He gets his name from the Chihuahua bobble-head he takes with him for good luck on the dashboard of every vehicle he drives or flies.

They’ve been sent to South America to paint the home of a drug dealer with a laser target so that it can be targeted with a missile. It all seems pretty routine, although Roque wonders why a team as elite as they are would be sent on a mission that nearly any reconnaissance team could do. Then, as the jet with the missile is approaching, a busload of school children arrives at the hacienda. Clay gets on the radio to abort the mission, but a mysterious voice identifying himself as Max (Patric) tells the pilot to deliver the payload as instructed, then blocks the communications of the Losers. The team goes down to save the day and does, but not before Clay kills the drug dealer (Morales) they were sent to take out. Unfortunately, when the helicopter comes that is meant to fly them to safety, there’s not enough room for all of them. Without hesitating, Clay puts the kids aboard. Then, before the horrified eyes of the team, the copter is shot down and everyone aboard is killed.

Clay realizes that they were meant to be on that chopper and that the world believes they’re dead. In order to avoid becoming that way for real, they need to let the rest of the world go on thinking that. Of the team, only Pooch and Jensen have families although in Jensen’s case its siblings and a niece whose soccer team he follows like he’s got money on them in Vegas. The team is working  menial jobs trying to get back home when Clay is approached by a mysterious but beautiful woman named Aisha (Saldana) with an offer he can’t refuse – she’ll get the team back to the States as long as they help her take out Max. Clay is more than willing to accept the offer, but he quickly realizes that Max has a more insidious agenda on his mind and Aisha’s own motivations are questionable. It will take a good deal of firepower and skill to get out of this situation alive but then again, they were dead to begin with.

This is based on a DC/Vertigo comic series of the same name and yes, there are more than a few similarities to the A-Team and other movies of that ilk; in fact, I can think of three like it coming out this year alone (besides the A-Team feature there’s also the all-star action flick The Expendables coming out later this summer) that have a similar plot. Frankly, I didn’t realize there were that many elite teams being sent to South America only to be betrayed and forced to fight powerful forces in order to clear their names. It would sure make me think twice before joining an elite fighting unit eh?

I really like Morgan in his role as Clay. He’s tough as nails but not without character flaws. His relationship with Roque and the triangle that is formed with Aisha is at the heart of the movie and with Elba, another excellent character actor the heart is beating nice and strong.

Evans is making a career out of the smart-talking team member (he plays Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four movies) and will be Steve Rogers in the upcoming Captain America movie, which just means he’s comfortable with comic book adaptations. He is one of the highlights here.

I liked Patric as Max, although Da Queen disagrees with me strongly here – she felt Max was the weak link in the movie. I think the character is way over-the-top but let’s face it, the movie really needs someone like it, someone so obsessed and drunk with his own power and sense of rightness that he can casually shoot someone for stumbling while holding the umbrella that was shading him. Now that’s just evil, you know?

Director White has little experience with action movies, but showed himself to be more than capable here. The action sequences are well done, but most importantly paced so as not to give the audience a whole lot of time to catch their breath. There’s enough quirky humor to balance the testosterone-fueled action sequences and there’s a style that gives homage to the film’s comic book roots and makes it a little slicker than the average bear.

Clearly this is meant to be the starting point for a franchise but the opening weekend box office numbers were disappointing so there’s little chance of that happening, which is a crying shame but in some ways perhaps inevitable – as I mentioned earlier there are far too many movies with similar plot points in the pipeline and far more that have come out in theaters and on television over the past five or six years. Still, this is one of the better representatives of the genre and those of you who turned away from the movie last weekend would do well to reconsider, particularly if you’re out for a little mindless entertainment, because this so fits the bill on that score.

REASONS TO GO: It’s big, it’s dumb, and it’s a whole lot of fun. No real new ground is broken but the characters are well-drawn, the action is spiffy and the pacing is breakneck.

REASONS TO STAY: The plot is kind of old hat and while the characters themselves are well-thought out, they are nonetheless a bit on the cliché side as elite Special Forces teams go.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s a lot of shooting, a good deal of things blowing up real good and one scene that’s on the sexy side. In other words, pretty much what you’d find in your standard broadcast TV show.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The story is somewhat loosely based on the arc published in the comic book series’ first six issues, collectively called “Ante Up.”

HOME OR THEATER: Sure, there are some big bangs and action films tend to work better on the big screen but quite frankly I think it would be just as swell on a good home theater system.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Shotgun Stories

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Repo Men

Jude Law is knocked for a loop.

(Universal) Jude Law, Forrest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber, Alice Braga, Carice van Houten, Chandler Canterbury, RZA, Joe Pingue, Liza Lapira, Tiffany Espensen, Yvette Nicole Brown, Wayne Ward, Tanya Clarke, Max Turnbull. Directed by Miguel Sapochnik

In the modern capitalist society, if you fail to pay for a purchase it gets repossessed, whether it is a car, a computer or a home. In the future, that also might extend to artificial organs that are keeping you alive.

Remy (Law) is a repo man working for The Union, the worlds largest broker of artificial organs. Prohibitively expensive, generous credit plans are available so that people can purchase a chance at an extended life – at an exorbitant interest rate of course. When people start missing their payments, people like Remy and his best friend Jake (Whitaker) will find you, stun you into unconsciousness with a tazer and remove the artificial organ (which are called “artiforgs”) quickly and efficiently via home surgery. The patient usually doesn’t survive the procedure.

Business is pretty good and Remy is the best there is, a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by his boss Frank (Schreiber). However, it is taking a toll on his marriage to Carol (van Houten) who wants him to get a job that involves regular hours so that he might spend more time with their son Peter (Canterbury). A sales job pays much less than repo and as Jake points out, Remy is far more suited to the repo life than to sales which they both regard as weak.

However, after Jake executes a repo in their front yard during a barbecue, she gives Remy an ultimatum; make a change or get out. Remy decides to do one last job, to take the artificial heart from T-Bone (RZA), a producer of soul music that Remy admires. Remy allows him to complete mixing one last song, but when he goes to stop the artificial heart with a faulty defibrillator, the resulting shock about kills him.

He wakes up with a top-of-the-line artificial heart inside of him and is absolutely terrified. There is no way he can continue making payments on the expensive piece of equipment, especially now that the experience of being a client himself has led him to lose his nerve as a repo man, now seeing the clients as human beings with names…and wives. While his own wife has left him, furious that he went on that last job, Remy prepares to go on the run with Beth (Braga), a lounge singer he’s taken under his wing and a girl with more artificial parts than a Chevy. However, in a society where it is impossible to hide from barcode scanners and bioscan devices, how can they possibly beat a system that is so stacked against them?

This is director Sapochnik’s first feature, and as first efforts go, it’s not too bad. The action sequences are nicely directed with a nod towards the Matrix school of stunts and the overall look of the film is gritty and believable. Whitaker and Law have good chemistry in the leads and while Braga is a bit colorless as the romantic interest, she fulfills her function pretty nicely.

There is a lot of blood here. A whole lot of it. You’re gonna feel like you need a shower after jumping elbow deep into this mutha. Those who get squeamish at surgical films are going to be making a bee-line to the bathroom watching this, so my advice to those with weak stomachs is to go in forewarned.

One of the big problems of the movie is the transformation of Remy from repo man to rebel. He goes from being derisive of clients, sneering throughout “a job’s a job” in a thick cockney accent to being heroic. I understand he went through a life-changing trauma (and to be fair, it seems to me that the period in which the change takes place is probably a period of several months to a year, although it seems very quick onscreen) but there’s no transition. One moment he’s vicious and uncaring and the next he’s a saint. That lack of evolution is the biggest drawback to the movie. I think that they could have used an additional ten minutes or so of illustrating the character’s changeover. If you don’t believe his change of heart, you can’t believe the movie.

In all honesty, this is another movie in which the concept is better than the execution. There’s an interesting parable to be had here about public health care I think, and that may have been what the filmmakers were going for all along. Unfortunately, because they made the decision to accentuate the action over the character development, I think the movie ultimately misses the mark. It’s worth seeing, but just barely so.

REASONS TO GO: Decent action, decently photographed, decently acted. An interesting parable for the health care debate.

REASONS TO STAY: Law’s changeover from violent and amoral to caring and concerned is a bit abrupt and unbelievable.

FAMILY VALUES: A good deal of violence and plenty of gore, lots of foul language and a little bit of sexuality – put it all together and it adds up to not for kids!!!

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Jake teases Remy about the title of the book that he writes as being weak, but it’s the actual title of the novel the movie is based on.

HOME OR THEATER: A very mild nod towards the big screen for some of the effects shots, but you could go either way with this one.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Stranger Than Fiction

12 Rounds

John Cena has an idea of how to deal with Randy Orton.

(20^th Century Fox) John Cena, Steve Harris, Ashley Scott, Aidan Gillen, Brian White, Gonzalo Melendez, Taylor Cole. Directed by Renny Harlin

Police officers are sworn to serve and protect the populace, but the fact is that they are all only human. When everything they love is on the line, how far would one police officer go?

In New Orleans, the feds are tracking Miles Jackson (Gillen), a notorious terrorist, but he turns out to be far too clever for them and escapes their clutches with the aid of his girlfriend Erica (Cole) and accomplice. He is not too clever, however, to avoid the eagle-eyed NOPD patrolman Danny Fisher (Cena) who spots the terrorist’s escape vehicle being driven by his girlfriend. Despite his partner Hank Carver’s (White) misgivings, Danny pulls them over not realizing Miles is hiding in the trunk.

A shoot-out ensues in which Carver is shot, although not seriously and the bad guys flee in their muscle car. Danny pursues them on foot, cutting through yards until he miraculously catches up and uses a conveniently nearby boat to stop the car in its tracks. When the girlfriend attempts to flee the scene on foot, she is cut down by a speeding truck (which apparently didn’t see the boat blocking the street) and killed.

Of course, Miles blames Danny for the death of his girlfriend and plots an elaborate revenge. A year later Miles escapes from prison and kidnaps Danny’s girlfriend Molly (Scott). He informs Danny that he will have to perform a number of elaborate and dangerous tasks. If he fails at any one of them, Molly will die. With the FBI getting involved, New Orleans will turn into a battleground between these two deadly men.

Director Renny Harlin has quite an action pedigree, with such action classics as Die Hard 2 and The Long Kiss Goodnight. While this isn’t to the level of those big-budget films, it’s actually quite satisfactory as an energetic modern action film. Cena, better known as a WWE wrestler, proves himself to be a promising action star, much in the same way The Rock did at a similar point in his career. Does he have the same kind of talent as Dwayne Johnson? I’m not sure, but if he wants to pursue the acting thing I think he could have a future ahead of him. He’s got the charisma and the looks to do it.

The problem here is that the script tends to ask you to take an awful lot on faith. Several of the situations really stretch the boundaries of believability to the breaking point which is a bit of a shame because if they had actually toned it down just a hair this would have been a better movie.

As it is its solid, mindless entertainment that fits the bill if you’re looking to 86 your troubles from your head for a couple of hours. While most of the cast (which is largely made up of unknowns) does a credible job, it is Cena that shoulders the load on his broad muscled frame and he does it with panache. Given the negative reviews this generated, I was pleasantly surprised at how good this movie was. Don’t expect another Die Hard movie but don’t expect a direct-to-video Dolph Lundgren disaster either.

WHY RENT THIS: Cena proves himself to be a decent action star. Harlin is an expert at staging action sequences and these are top-notch.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The script is a bit on the brainless side. Some of the sequences really stretch believability a bit.

FAMILY VALUES: Lots of violence, lots of action but if you feel comfortable letting your child watch Cena on a weekly WWE program, this ought to be fine too.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Cena is the first wrestler to appear in more than one WWE Films release.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There is a featurette on Cena’s stunts in which we learn that the wrestler is deathly afraid of heights. Who knew? On the Blu-Ray edition, there are a couple of viral videos about the film.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: Awake

Deja Vu

In the aftermath of a disaster, Denzel Washington works the evidence.

(Touchstone) Denzel Washington, Jim Caviezel, Val Kilmer, Bruce Greenwood, Matt Craven, Paula Patton, Adam Goldberg, Donna Scott, Elle Fanning, Elden Henson, Erika Alexander. Directed by Tony Scott

Have you ever gotten the feeling that you’ve seen a movie before, even as you’re watching it for the first time? It’s not necessarily something a filmmaker wants their audience to feel, but sometimes there’s no help for it.

It’s Fat Tuesday in post-Katrina New Orleans, and the Algiers ferry bound for the Crescent City is full of sailors and partygoers bound and determined to have a great time. Not too far into the voyage, a car on the ferry explodes, setting off a chain reaction and a second, more damaging explosion and the Ferry goes down to the bottom of Lake Ponchatrain. The catastrophe kills men, women and children in a city which is already reeling from a hurricane that has all but destroyed it.

ATF investigator Doug Carlin (Washington) is called to the scene to determine whether the explosion was a deliberate act. While the FBI, local police and other agencies are squabbling, Carlin – possessed of a cat-quick mind and the ability to instantly see the compelling evidence – quickly determines that the cause of the explosion was, in fact, a bomb, making it a deliberate act of terrorism.

Carlin’s style irritates some of his colleagues, although FBI Agent Pryzwarra (Kilmer) finds him amusing and impressive. Pryzwarra’s boss (Greenwood) agrees and when a burned body washes up onshore in an area that would put it in the water a full two hours before the Ferry disaster, the FBI and Carlin realize that the key to solving this mystery lies with finding out what happened to the beautiful woman (Patton) lying on the coroner’s table. To do this, Carlin is brought into a highly sensitive experiment that may allow a quick-thinking investigator like Carlin a second chance at seeing what really happened, but also change his life forever.

Scott and Washington are reunited for the first time since the two made Crimson Tide and the stylish Scott knows how to use his leading man ably, even though Denzel is getting a little bit long in the tooth for these kinds of roles. The premise of by observing the past being able to affect it is one not new to science fiction literature or movies (heck, “The Twilight Zone” basically made a living on just that kind of conundrum) and in all honesty, Déjà Vu doesn’t add anything new to the dance.

However, Tony Scott is an adept action director and he doesn’t disappoint here, with a chase scene that has the two cars in different time periods, with Washington unable to see the car he is chasing and being guided along by his team back at the appropriately grungy looking lab. The climactic scenes pitting Washington and his love interest against the bad guy (a very un-Christlike Jim Caviezel) are played with appropriate tension. A lot of directors could take lessons from Scott in that regard – it’s not as easy a skill as it seems.

Scott is blessed with a very talented cast, including the criminally under-used Matt Craven as Carlin’s partner – this is an actor who deserves meatier roles – and also reunites Washington with Greenwood, both of whom got their starts on the “St. Elsewhere” television show so many years ago.

To the bad is the one bugaboo that plagues these kinds of time-tripping sci-fi actioners – the tendency for the plot to get muddled and confusing. Scott trumps this by making his characters real and then casts interesting actors to play them – Goldberg is particularly nifty as a science geek, and Patton makes a gorgeous corpse, but also a mighty fine love interest. The resolution seems a bit forced, but then if you think about these things too hard you can get migraines.

I kind of regret missing this in the multiplex, although it looked just fine on our medium-sized bedroom TV screen. To be fair, this isn’t a movie that’s really out to break new ground. It just wants its audience to have a good time, and at that, it’s successful. If you’re looking for something to rent that satisfies your Jones for action, you could do worse than this.

WHY RENT THIS: Some nice action sequences highlighted by some very big booms – gotta love things that blow up real good. The cast is top-notch. The climactic scenes ratchet up the tension.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The plot can be hard to follow. While tense, the resolution seems a bit forced and contrived.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s a good deal of violence and some sensuality but otherwise okay for most audiences.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: While the movie was in pre-production, New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, forcing the producers to make a decision to shoot elsewhere, a move that director Tony Scott resisted. In the time that it took to reboot the production, New Orleans had recovered sufficiently to allow shooting there and pre-production resumed, allowing Deja Vu the distinction of being the first movie to film in New Orleans post-Katrina.

NOTABLE DVD FEATURES: The Surveillance Window feature allows the director commentary to be fleshed out with video sequences that may also be viewed separately.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Everybody’s Fine

The Bourne Ultimatum

Matt Damon ponders how much cooler he would have looked if the production had sprung for a Harley.

(Universal) Matt Damon, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Julia Stiles, Scott Glenn, Albert Finney, Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez, Trevor St John, Daniel Bruhl, Joey Anash, Tom Gallop, Corey Johnson, Colin Stinton . Directed by Paul Greengrass

The most recent installment of the hit film series based on the John Le Carre spy novels, The Bourne Ultimatum picks up pretty much where the last film, The Bourne Supremacy left off, in Moscow. We pick up with memory-challenged superspy Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) being chased by the Moscow police through the back alleys of Moscow. An injured Bourne finally makes his way into a closed for the night medical clinic where he tries to effect crude repairs, but he is interrupted by a pair of clever cops. They aren’t quite clever enough and he escapes once again, disappearing from the CIA grid.

Back in the States, CIA director Ezra Kramer (Glenn) is very eager for Bourne to be caught. Deputy Director Noah Vosen (Strathairn) believes Bourne is a major threat to the agency, whereas Deputy Director Pamela Landy (Allen) thinks Bourne is not necessarily out to take down the agency, but instead to get answers. Landy is put in charge of the hunt for Jason Bourne.

In Turin, a newspaper columnist (Considine) meets with a CIA section chief (Stinton) who gives the columnist information about Blackbriar, the successor to the Treadstone program that created Bourne (and that Bourne essentially destroyed). The CIA, apparently monitoring every cell phone call on the planet, picks up a call from the columnist to his editor that contains the word “Blackbriar” and immediately he is put under surveillance. Bourne by chance reads the man’s column (apparently he’s a big fan of the Guardian newspaper, since he reads it in another country) and realizes that the columnist may have information that Bourne needs. Of course, this sets off all sorts of mayhem, including a chance meeting between Bourne and Nikki Parsons (Stiles), the Treadstone agent who helped Bourne previously. Chased by the CIA, Interpol and quite probably some irate Girl Scouts, Bourne makes his way to New York City with the intention of discovering the truth about himself and possibly bringing an end to the game he no longer wants to play.

In a terse spy thriller like this one, you have to take a few things on faith, and suspend disbelief to a certain extent. It’s hard to believe that an agency with the technical ability to pick out a single word in a phone conversation involving two men not under suspicion for anything are unable to suss out a man entering their country undisguised under a passport they themselves issued. I mean, don’t they have computers at the airport?

Plot holes aside, you come to a Bourne movie for the action sequences, and here the movie doesn’t disappoint. Chased by assassins (and chasing them), evading detection by legions of agents and police, director Greengrass sets up a massive body count (not to mention an auto body count, as the film might just be worse for automobiles than for stuntmen) and extended action sequences which, while breaking no new ground, do cover old ground expertly. He keeps the suspense ratcheted up to 11 throughout most of the movie, with very little breathing room and manages to move the plot along with expository sequences without breaking momentum created by the action scenes – the one in Tangiers, by the way, might be one of the best you’ll ever see. However, be warned many sequences appear to be filmed by hand-held cameras. While this delivers a kind of you-are-there feel to these sequences, in my opinion it’s used a little overly much and gives the movie a kind of jerky quality that I found jarring.

Damon continues to do the part of Jason Bourne with extraordinary aplomb, rarely displaying much emotion but allowing the feelings bubbling below the surface to see the light of day from time to time. Strathairn plays a worthy adversary who picks up after Chris Cooper and Brian Cox from the first two movies and acquits himself nicely. Stiles does some of her best work in the Bourne movies and as the only other actor besides Damon to appear in all three movies, providing some nice continuity.

The movie takes place in several European cities, including Moscow, Turin, Madrid and in Tangiers, Morocco as well as New York City. The movie uses actual locations to add a further air of realism, a nice touch (which created some difficulties for the filmmakers – if you look closely during the train station scene, there are people who notice the cameras and point to them). While many of the secrets of Jason Bourne are explained (including his actual identity), there is certainly enough room left at the end for a sequel if the filmmakers and actors choose to go there which for awhile, it appeared they did until Greengrass recently withdrew from the proposed fourth Bourne film, leaving the status of the movie very much up in the air – Damon’s participation without Greengrass is certainly less likely.

Like most of the third movies, this one is pretty flawed but you can take some solace in the fact that while it doesn’t arise above its own ambitions, the movie nevertheless fulfills those ambitions nicely. In other words, you get exactly what you came to see.

WHY RENT THIS: Awesome action sequences as have become synonymous with this franchise. Exotic locations that bring to mind the cold war spy thrillers that the source material was contemporaneous with. The tension is unrelenting.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The plot holes are hard to ignore. Too much hand-held camerawork which was cliche even before this was made.

FAMILY VALUES: While the action sequences are terrific, they may be a bit overwhelming for some, as the sudden and sometimes realistic violence will be.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: Among the pictures of terminated agents that Landy faxes near the film’s conclusion are producer Frank Marshall and actor Richard Chamberlin, who portrayed Bourne in a 1988 TV mini-series.

NOTABLE DVD FEATURES: Nothing listed.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Miami Vice

Their other car is a Corolla.

(Universal) Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaran Hinds, Justin Theroux, Barry Shabaka Henley, John Ortiz, Luis Tosar, Elizabeth Rodriguez, John Hawkes. Directed by Michael Mann.

It’s a given that everything old will become new again at some point. Take Miami Vice as an example. As a television show during the mid 1980s, it helped define the era with its South Beach cool. The soundtrack included some of the signature songs of the era – “In the Air Tonight” (reprised in the movie, but not by Phil Collins sadly) and Glenn Frey’s “You Belong to the City.” For a time, record labels campaigned mightily to get their music onto the show’s soundtrack because it guaranteed them a serious sales upsurge.

Twenty years later, the show has largely faded into its time, but for those who loved the show are as affectionate for it now as they ever were. Show creators Anthony Yerkovich and Michael Mann have made the decision to resurrect the show and update it for the 21^st century. For me, this set off a lot of alarm bells in my head. Movies based on classic television shows have been nearly without exception extraordinarily bad. For every Mission: Impossible there have been several like Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched and My Favorite Martian. The only thing that even kept it on my radar was Mann’s recent track record, which includes Collateral, one of the more stylish thrillers of recent times, and The Insider, which was nominated for seven Oscars.

While the names remain the same, this is most definitely not your father’s Miami Vice. Detective James “Sonny” Crockett (Farrell) gets a frantic phone call from an informant (Hawkes) who has had to give up FBI undercover agents to a vicious drug cartel operating in Miami in order to save his family – unsuccessfully. It’s obvious there is a mole in the FBI somewhere.

Fujima (Hinds), the FBI agent in charge, enlists Crockett and his partner Rico Tubbs (Foxx) to go undercover; since they are in the Miami-Dade police department, he can trust them. Their superior, Captain Castillo (Henley) agrees to it. The two undercover cops set themselves as transporters of illegal goods. Fujima tells them that the supplier for the man they’re after in South Florida is a Columbian named Jose Yero (Ortiz). They arrange to take down a shipment of his, destroying the boats of the transporter he has been using. Using an intermediary, they set themselves up to take over the business.

They are surprised to find out that Yero is not the boss of the organization. Isabella, a beautiful Asian woman (Li) seems to be in charge, but it turns out she is just the girlfriend of the man who is in charge, a man named Montoya (Tosar). Crockett and Tubbs find themselves in a position to take down the entire organization from top to bottom.

There are complications, however. Crockett falls hard for Isabella, which makes Yero suspicious. He sets up a hit on the two of them and when that fails, kidnaps Tubbs’ girlfriend, fellow undercover cop Trudy Joplin (Harris) whom he has for reasons I can’t fathom introduced to Yero as…you guessed it, his girlfriend. Crockett and Tubbs may be in over their heads against a network of vicious killers that have absolutely no compunction about leaving a high body count of civilians in their wake.

Miami Vice gets high marks for its action sequences. Mann doesn’t waste a single moment on-camera (OK, the shower scene with Tubbs and Joplin might have been a little too long, but I didn’t hear anyone complaining) and keeps the movie’s pacing at a breakneck pace.

Like its predecessor, Miami Vice gets high marks for style. The detectives drive state-of-the-art wheels, boats and jets and hit night clubs that actually look like clubs that the high and mighty would hang out at. While the soundtrack isn’t as memorable as that of the television shows, it nevertheless pulsates with some excellent tracks from Moby and India.Arie.

You don’t go to a movie like Miami Vice for the performances. I thought Foxx did pretty well as Tubbs, but Farrell at times was a bit too mannered for Crockett, and he gets the majority of the screen time – I would have liked to see more of Tubbs. However, Gong Li does an unsurprisingly good job in the femme fatale role.

The gun battle at the movie’s conclusion is loud and looks and sounds a lot like what that kind of confrontation with that kind of firepower would look and sound like. Hopefully, you’ll have a high end sound system to take enjoy the experience. This is far grittier than the television show, which makes some sense – given that it has an R rating, they could go a lot farther than they could on the small screen.

This is pure summer entertainment, and has a sense of realism in the police procedural aspect as well. Although there are a few moments that make no sense other than to put one character or another in jeopardy, there is no doubt that this movie succeeds wildly at what it set out to do. From that standpoint, there’s definitely something in the air.

WHY RENT THIS: Extraordinary action sequences take front and center stage. Foxx is outstanding as Tubbs. The movie retains the South Beach style and an updated but still strong soundtrack which may invoke a sense of nostalgia.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Some of the plot points are a bit preposterous. Farrell is a little too mannered as Crockett.

FAMILY VALUES: Oy vey! Violence, sex and drugs aplenty. Lots of foul language. Definitely one to put on after the kids are in bed.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: Actor Edward James Olmos turned down the opportunity to reprise his role as Castillo and TV theme song composer Jan Hammer also turned down the job of scoring the film.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: A realistic prank played on Farrell by undercover officers he was shadowing for research purposes is shown as part of a feature on the actors preparation for their roles. There is also an unrated directors cut that restores footage cut out to get the movie its R rating.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Doubt