Miami Wise

My visit to Boîte Noire yesterday threw me in a dilemma. And as you would expect from a guy like me, I ended up making the wrong choice. I was near the Québec wall when I remembered that Miss Bijoux had never seen Michel Jetté's HOCHELAGA, so I grabbed the DVD, but had to let it go when I saw Érick Canuel's LE DERNIER TUNNEL. However, this one quickly left my hands when I spotted THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, a legendary british crime flick that has recently seen a DVD release. Then, my eyes spotted WISE GUYS, a mob comedy with Danny DeVito, and looking at the credits I realised that it was directed by fuckin' Brian De Palma !!



I took it home, not before Pat told me he had seen it on TV a long time ago and that, as he remembered, it was not very good. I should have listened to that old friend...

Ever seen a "comedy" that's so painfully unfunny that you don't even laugh while watching it ? That the shadow of a smile barely crosses your face during an hour and a half ? I have found the perfect movie to be used as an example : WISE GUYS.

Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo are two neighbors and best friends, and they both work for a small time mob boss who runs a restaurant in a working neighboorhood of Newark, New Jersey. The boss does not recognise their full potential : he makes 'em pick up his laundry and groceries, and basically treats them like shit. When he send them to the race tracks to bet on a horse that's almost sure to lose, they decide to bet on another horse with better chances, but of course the horse initially chosen by the gangster ends up winning and they lose all the money.

They are then instructed, privately, as a way to "prove their trust", to kill one another. But they're "best friends", get it ? What follows is as random as you might think, and as thin as the character's motivations.



I never thought I would see a De Palma movie that's so bad. His whole career was not always successful, of course, but to see such a sorry excuse for a film is beyond me. No "quality stamp" for Brian here ! This movie stinks like it's not allowed. The two main characters are caricatures, without an inch of good humor attached to them. The way De Palma makes the viewer understand that their job sucks is like insisting we're dumb; and as likely as it is that parts of his audience may not be Nobel prize material, nobody among them would be dumb enough to consider his movie as a "good one".

Sure, it was 1986. But is that an excuse ? When our two pals travel to Vegas and end up maxing a co-mobster's credit card, we can almost begin to sense a comical situation coming up; when it does arrive, however, the actors are doing way too much and it ruins the whole thing. Harvey Keitel would have been a "redemption" if his role wasn't so minimal. In the end, it's not as painful as I make it sound to be, but when you think about the possibilities that such a cast & crew promised, you can't help to feel you just sadly wasted your time.

*

Michael Mann, on the other hand, has never let me down. Even the overdiscussed MANHUNTER made a huge impression on me, when I finally decided to watch it last year. So it's with a shiver of excitement that I went to Paramount, at noon today, and paid my 11$ matinée fee - an incredible rip-off - to see his latest, MIAMI VICE.



I will not act like it's the first time I hear the words. I have been looking forward to see this movie for a whole year. As soon as it was announced that shooting was about to begin on a "film" version of Miami Vice, with a modern, tougher and meaner edge, and that Mann himself was directing, I wet my pants. I have been counting the months... and the weeks... and the days. I was so busy since the movie was released that I didn't find time to see it, but enough of that.

After seeing the trailers for three autumn blockbusters - by Alfonso Cuaròn, Brian De Palma (an Ellroy adaptation of "The Black Dahliah") and Martin Scorcese - I was finally given my main course, salivating.

It begins with no credits, immediately putting us in the middle of an undercover operation, set in a nightclub, in Miami, of course. In the first five minutes, we are given a taste of things to come : brutality, speed, crime. Tubbs & Crockett have to halt their operation in order to help out another undercover cop from a different agency, who's been uncovered and whose family has been slaughtered. All because of a leak somewhere. And a gang of brutal white supremacists dealing drugs will become their point of focus.

You can't really spoil this plot, or even describe it - it's about life as an undercover cop, the lies, the facades, the masks, and the risks. Treason and the attraction of the easy, criminal life. Power and drugs. The administration's obstacles to go ahead with an operation. All shot with high definition digital cameras, giving us breath taking images of the exotic locales - Columbia, Paraguay, and of course Miami.



Colin Farrell, as coked-out as he may be, does a pretty good Sonny Crockett, and Jamie Foxx a good enough Tubbs, but it looks like the characters are only loosely based on the ones played by Phillip Michael Thomas & Don Johnson in the 80's show. The Ferrari is still there, and so are the boats, and the impressive white art déco mansions. The comic relief is rather rare, and the serious tone gives us an idea of what the series could have looked & felt like, if only the creators had a 250 000 000$ budget.

The introduction of a "love interest" lets the tension deflate a bit, but will soon make it rise again, due to the dangerous nature of the flirt between Crockett and a "businesswoman" played by the beautiful Gong Li.



There is something to be said about the music we hear throughout the film, though. I don't know who his "music supervisor" was, but Mann puts some rather bland "rap / metal /emo" songs over some of the action scenes, and to be honest they don't have the timeless quality of most of Jan Hammer's score from the original series. The powerful emotions that well blended music & images can bring are evocated in one of the final scenes, where only piano notes and drones are used - minimal music for maximal effects. You can't help but wonder if these "songs of the day" will still be efficient a couple of years from now, when a new generation watches the movie on their giant TV.

The movie ends with a Phil Collins cover playing over the credits, after 134 minutes, and you can't help but wonder why it's so short.