There’s a big Miami Vice ad in Sunday’s N.Y. Times focusing mainly on David Poland ‘s MCN review, calling it “a summer movie that a lot of people have been waiting for, something for the adults to see, something that demands that you pay attention…with lots of guns and drugs…a movie that, by the third act, makes you feel like you are in the experience and not watching the experience.”
Good deal and nice going, but I have two and a half observations. One, not to slight Poland but the fact that Universal is using an MCN quote rather than, say, a quote from one of the big super-venerated print critics tells us that Universal couldn’t find a big super-venerated print critic who’s over-the-moon nutso about Vice (the big distribs always spotlight high-toned, old-pro print quotes in their lead-off ads). Two, print is receding and online is gaining — would Universal have used an online guy for their lead-off quote ad for a major film, say, five years ago? And three (i.e., the halfer), my judgments, although not quite constituting a 100% total-somersault rave, have more verve and pizazz than Poland’s jottings.
I called Michael Mann’s film “my kind of two-hour popcorn movie…an exquisitely configured, not-too-taxing thing for people who are smarter, hipper and more seasoned than the mainstream squealies who went nuts for Pirates 2.” I also said that “the fumes of Miami Vice — the aroma, the grit, the atmospheric stuff, the digital flavor of Dion Beebe’s here-and-there photography — are superb (and sometimes in a realm so special I can’t quite describe it), and this alone makes it the supreme commercial ‘ride’ movie of the summer,” and that it’s “a crime movie that roars in and does the job, but lingers on with so many different little moods and tones and accents and side-excursions that, like all first-rate films, it’s clearly up to a lot more than just ‘story’.” See what I mean? I know that I sound like a puffed-up egoistic asshole, but the writing’s more savory.