For Fun: Let's Re-cast

[Tropicana]

Miami Vice

The original was perfectly cast. Crocket was a rugged type past his prime Tubbs was a pretty bwoy type stuck on himself.






PMT used to spent a lot of time in Jamaica as he was dating a Jamaican woman with locks who didn't try to pressure him into commitment (he said this in an interview.)






I am watching the newer version for the first time and trying to keep an open mind but they are totally different types from the original. Jamie Foxx was incredible in Collateral but...don't like him or Colin Farrell in Miami Vice.







Maybe this was deliberate so people wouldn't compare. Perhaps they should have called it Mami Vice II and positioned these two as the son's of the original.


So how would you cast Miami Vice today?

[Tropicana]

With great titles like "The Insider", "Collateral" and "Heat" under his belt, Director Michael Mann has proven himself time and again a solid filmmaker who can deliver gritty action dramas & thrillers like few others. It makes one wonder why then that his "Miami Vice", a more contemporary and darker film take of the high gloss 1980's action TV series he created, is such a misfire.Part of it could be his desire to move away from the show. At a time when television was relatively simple, Mann's "Vice" hit with a style all its own - a gaudy, loud, bombastic tone which laid the way for the procedural cop thriller movies and television that followed it. The style has become so cliched that Mann has decided to take the film version in an entirely different direction - dark, gritty, atmospheric minimalism. Gone are the sun-drenched panoramas and pastel suits, replaced by ruthlessly straightforward dramatics and dark vistas of trailer parks, packed nightclubs and slums turned war zones.Gone also is much of the fun and excitement, 'Miami' quickly becoming bogged down in boredom due to lack of much of a story. At first unfolding like those great cop thrillers of the 70's ala "The French Connection", there's a refreshing realism to the way it throws us into unfolding action and avoids exposition in favour of moving the ever twisting plot forward. Mann creates at first an effective sense of being dropped into a bigger world which we don't know about, that has been going on for a long while, and that for the most part we'll never understand or be a part of.Then suddenly comes the need to build character and the film drops the ball badly. When focused on the drug empire element, the film can and does meander, but at least it feels relatively believable (although these drug lords are obviously too quick to trust in order to move the story along). Mann never panders this element, violence is brutal and fast. Yet when switching to character, he tries to build a romantic interest for each of our leads and ultimately only succeeds at making a long film feel even longer.Casting on the project is a mixed bag. The more veteran supporting players like Ciarin Hinds do their best with their limited scenes but have next to nothing to do, whilst people like Justin Theroux simply run around with practically no dialogue. Rising actress Naomie Harris proves a solid female cop character at first, but as the usual twists come about in the story she becomes caught up in the melodrama of the script's most sentimental subplot.Foxx relatively acquits himself from this thanks to his character remaining cool and business like throughout. Stuck with only about half the screen time of Farrell (and sharing no chemistry with the Irishman whatsoever), Foxx hangs back and drops his usual smarmy cockiness for something a bit more real - ultimately succeeding.Farrell on the other hand not so much. Armed with a terrible haircut, porn star moustache, designer suits he looks very uncomfortable in, Farrell tackles his material with a tired forwardness. There's no twinge of humour, no dangerous edge, not even the cold stare of someone who does the things he does. Farrell just plays one note, burned out, throughout the film - in some scenes it works that way but in others it just seems entirely unbelievable and at points ridiculous.By far though the biggest miscast is Gong Li. A solid actress who proved one of the more fun things in last year's woefully overwrought "Memoirs of a Geisha", here she is playing a Chinese-Cuban cartel leader's trophy wife. Most of the time dressed to the nines in hot black pantsuits, Li's acting is best when it requires silence. It's not just that both her dialogue and English is terrible ("I know nice place for mojito"), Mann just can't seem to be bothered helping her deliver her lines. The result is each one is delivered in the same monotone, and the eventual emotional turnabout she experiences rings not only utterly false, but unintentionally funny.

http://www.darkhorizons.com/reviews/532/miami-vice

[Tropicana]

Taking All the Fun Out of Vice

The TV show Miami Vice is a relic of the 1980's, a weekly descent on a fancy speedboat into a pastel-colored Heart of Darkness full of sex, drugs and, worst of all, macho posturing. Filmmaker Michael Mann and series creator Anthony Yerkovich took NBC boss Brandon Tartikoff's description of "MTV Cops" and built a show around it; the title has become synonymous with Reagan-era excess. Mann's theatrical visuals were edited for maximum adrenaline; entire set-pieces played out as short films cut in sync to the songs of the era; the sense of stylistic overload was leavened only by fleeting references to current events.When Vice became the latest in a line of TV shows scheduled for movie upgrades, it came attached to the show's master stylist. Back in the day, Mann's sole purpose was to bring an 80's movie into your home every week. Now, freed from the content restrictions of NBC censors, I expected to see what Vice might have looked like if HBO were doing TV series back then. Either Mann was going to give us a jolt of 80's nostalgia, reminding us why the show was so terrible yet compulsively watchable, or he was going to play it straight, upping the angst quotient and macho bull****, muting the color scheme, and reminding us why you can't make a ho into a housewife.
Mann went with option number 2; Vice is a dismal affair that puts a serious face on everything that has become cliche since 1984. The series was a showcase for drug trading set to music—sort of a DEA version of Schoolhouse Rock. Guys wanted to look like Crockett and Tubbs, to drive their fast cars, wear their flashy clothes, and have their action-packed adventures. The remake puts a stop to all that wishing and hoping, despite a promising opening sequence. Mann and cinematographer Dion Beebe lead us through a visually compelling storytelling maze that ends in a gruesome suicide and even more gruesome murder. Mann lets the visuals tell the story, edited to a Jay-Z track, and we are pulled into the quick cuts and the limited view of events as seen by detectives Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Tubbs (Jamie Foxx). The situation becomes clear to us and the characters simultaneously, allowing us join their adrenaline rush.
This is where Mann excels. Where Bob Fosse edited to the dance, Mann edits to the music underscoring his glossy depictions of extreme violence. Unfortunately, Miami Vice is also a showcase for what Mann does worst. It's full of what is supposed to pass for plot and dialogue. The plot is a confusing tangle of extraneous characters and loose ends. The dialogue is so overdone and preposterous that, when the theater screening Vice suddenly lost sound in the dialogue speaker for 15 minutes, the movie actually made sense. The characters babble for interminably long stretches before Mann remembers he's making an action movie and shoots someone in the head. So many brains splatter all over the screen (more people are shot in the head than in The Proposition) that there weren't any left for the script. This is the last act of a Desperate Mann.
Foxx and Farrell look more inclined to kill each other than be partners—it's doubtful that either would trust the other with his life—and while Farrell brings the right amount of sleaze and weary angst to his otherwise mismanaged Crockett, Foxx glares unconvincingly at us from the screen. It doesn't help that Foxx resembles R. Kelly with a nappy billy goat beard that looks stereotypically like Brillo. (The tough macho guy is a role Foxx needs to remove from his oeuvre. He makes a convincing artist or a man struggling with demons—as his Bundini Brown proved in Mann's earlierAli—but he's no John Shaft.)
Crockett and Tubbs wade through an undercover drug scheme run by Arcangel de Jesus Montoya (Luis Tosar) and his right hand man, Jose Yero (John Ortiz). Along the way, they deal with some White supremacists who seem thrown in by Mann to offset how shoddily this film treats its minority characters. Mann usually fares well with minorities in his films and TV series, but Vice negates any good will he's accumulated by casting Naomie Harris and Gong Li as tough women who are reduced to helpless third-act victims, and a slew of Hispanics who all seem to be involved in drugs. If any of these characters had an arc of complexity, this sin might be forgivable. But they are all caricatures. Foxx's stable relationship with Harris is ignored in favor of Farrell's self-destructive, clumsy relationship with Gong, at least until those White supremacists show up. Though that plot wrinkle produces one hell of an exploding head, it's extraneous and sloppily handled.
Gong Li gets the bulk of Mann's laughable dialogue, and she deserves a refund from whomever taught her how to speak English. Gong, a fine actress in her Chinese films, becomes Super Bad "I Shall De-STWOY YOU!" Geisha Lady whenever she uses the Roman alphabet. Gong has been criticized for basically playing a victim/moll/geisha wannabe her entire career, but in Chinese she has a fiery presence that can't be extinguished. Here, she's supposed to be the rough-edged moll of Tosar, yet most of her performance consists of making bigger goo-goo eyes at Farrell than Pocahantas did. Her sex talk with Crockett ranks as the worst come on (or is it come in?) I've heard outside of porno. Mann ups the cruelty quotient by having her speak Spanish too. (She deserves two refunds.)

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2006/28/taking-all-the-fun-out-of-vice

[Tropicana]

Episode from the original series which has Braddie and some other Jamaicans (as well as some American actors with horrible Jamaican accents)

Braddie at 35:00

[Wahalla]

i did like the fact there was a female Chinese Cuban....much over looked group.... The two great grand parents laboured with Chinese in the Cuban cane fields..

However it did stretch my credibility that she took Colin Farel in a Cigar boat from Miami to Havana for dinner!!!.... Hell of a range... and given that it is the most watch area of US border bar the Nuevo Loredo crossing... with more AWACS tjhan the middle east... and the Cubans watch that like a hawk,,,,,(given that light planes go into Cuba to drop leaflets the cuban defense grid is hardly foolproof)

[Tropicana]

Okay let's re-cast this sucker:

Then they could have used:

Shemar Moore - in fact he could STILL do the part



Blair Underwood



Looks like Tubbs to me:




Laurence Fishburne






Denzel is not rugged enough.


Today they could use:

Lamman Rucker



Garry Carr



Boris Kodjoe




Need more suggestions for now.

[Tropicana]

My top pick is Shemar Moore. He is a pretty bwoy type and based on his work on Criminal Minds, he certainly has the intensity to play Tubbs.

[Tropicana]

Crockett


Then


Jim Caviezel





Johnnie Depp




Now

Keanu Reeves

Need to keep him to just a few days growth as longer beards on him look really weird. Anyway his work in Matrix shows that he has the intensity.

[Tropicana]

Since they went with an Irish actor, if Clive Own could do an American accent, he would make have made a nice Crocket.




Theo James - Give him another 5 years.

He does American and French accents convincingly.

Remember him from Downton Abbey. His character was one of the main reasons the show got so much of a buzz in its first season:

[Tropicana]

Thirty years later, Don Johnson still gets sentimental talking about his role as Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice. Calling it “a wild ride,” the 64-year-old actor looks back upon his time here (1984-89) so fondly that he said he would even consider doing an updated version of the show, 21st century style.We talked to Johnson by phone from the California home he shares with his wife, Kelley Phleger, and their three young children.
What was the situation like when you were shooting in the 1980s?
South Beach wasn’t in the lexicon. It was south Miami Beach when we first arrived. I could go on telling stories for days about the [experience]. I mean, you could shoot off a cannon, maybe hit a blue heron. It was deserted! I was like going, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ Don’t get me wrong. I loved it. I mean, I still have a love for Miami. It’s just a part of me. I’m so grateful for my time there. I went back and shot a Nike commercial with LeBron James not too long ago. And people are still very kind and generous. At restaurants I can barely pay a bill. It’s actually a symbiotic love affair.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertain...#storylink=cpy
Do you stay in touch with your costar Philip Michael Thomas?
He’s a dear, dear friend. We used to talk fairly frequently. I worked 14-16 hours a day with this man for five years, and we never had one argument, not one disagreement. We had each other’s back. We protected each other. You could feel the chemistry and the brotherhood, and I think ultimately in a television series if the audience connects emotionally with the people it almost doesn’t matter what the a, b, or c story is. You just want to be with those people. People got a fresh look at something different. It was like, wow, I haven’t seen anything like this before, the fashion and the music is like it is in feature films. You can’t take that away. But in order for Miami Vice to stay relevant the audience has to connect. At the heart of the show is the sense of humor and the irony and the chemistry, and that’s what I believe was so powerful.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertain...#storylink=cpy
So let’s talk fashion. That was a big player.
Well, whenever I would have to go back to work, usually in late July — I say this with all the love in my heart — it was like being sentenced to Cambodia. The heat was unbearable. I knew I would be working in extreme conditions for the next three months, and by the time it got to October you were so beat up. And my clothes: I had to wear a jacket, I had to wear a gun, a shoulder holster. It’s 100 degrees out there with 98 percent humidity. How can I do this? So I just started rolling up the sleeves, losing pieces of clothing — socks, belts — wearing T-shirts. Lo and behold, soon I’m wearing Versace, Armani, Claude Montana, Thierry Mugler, all these incredible designers.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertain...#storylink=cpy

Does it feel as if 30 years have passed?You know something? My wife always says, ‘My God. You have lived such a large life,’ and I know what she means by that. I kind of feel like no time has passed, yet chronologically I know it has. I don’t feel any different. I have a good energy and great health. I’ve kind of got a kind of magical thing going on here.
So I hear you’re working on a new show called Score set in Miami.
Yes, it’s about college football, and I play this outrageous coach that breaks all the recruiting rules. We show off Miami in all its ’80s glory — pre-social media, pre-cellphones, pre-PC, pre-everything! It was also the beginning of big time, big money college football. I have every intention of doing it; I finished cowriting the pilot. But you know the way the film business is now you have to go where you get the best incentives. It’s not the business we once knew. It’s tight. So I’m hoping when we get ready to go into production we’ll do it down there, and the film commission will help us out. For old time’s sake. Nothing would please me more.
And what about Sonny Crockett. Is he totally retired?
You know, perhaps there are some new episodes of Miami Vice that could come along. A reboot. I have talked to some big-time directors who would be interested in doing it. I’ve got a couple ideas of how you could do it in a seamless, spectacular way. I would re-create my role as Sonny as he is in the 21st century. It could be fun as hell.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertain...#storylink=cpy

More: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertain...le2260634.html

[Tropicana]

My picks for the next Crockett and Tubbs

Tubbs

Crockett

Theo James

Do you agree?