mr jelly

I read Daniel Hirshleifer's DVD review of Miami Vice at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=25666 and...

DVD Collectors series? What? Its one thing to disagree about the content of this film (which I do) - but how can you give you this HDDVD the collectors series treatment? The audio mess that this is alone should drop your review WAY down. Even if you could hear the actors talk in this film, who would know what they were saying? They mumble the whole way through! You admit to having to put the subtitles on but give it a collectors series rating! My longstanding faith in DVDTALK just dropped a notch. Here is my review of this disc:

Mann is the 2nd best american filmaker working today, right behind Scorsese. So how does he turn out the worst movie of the year, possibly the decade. Why?

Horrible story. Not only is it dull, pointless, and beyond simple, it never resolves. The simple goal is to find a mole - yet that thread is dropped, and nothing happens.

I kid you not - 1 hour and 45 minutes before anything actually happens in this movie - unfathomable.

If the characters were compeling, and we cared at all about them, maybe, maybe watching them dance the tango for 20 minutes would be interesting. Instead, its just more wasted camera.

Worst use of HD film ever. The film looks so grainy, so terrible, so god-awful digital, you would think your neighbor made this movie. The shot choices and edits are simpy BIZARRE, student-film quality. The hand-held is steady when actors walk down stairs, but jogs and gives a headache when they stand still. If the characters had a film crew with them documenting their actions as part of the storyline, then some of the choices might make sense, but having a handheld camera move from one actor to another during a firefight - and when it switches pan up to the sky like a docudrama makes absolutley no sense, and pulls you even further out of a film that is so horrible you could really care less about who lives or who dies. The original had more believable action and drama than this one ever could - even with cheese like a pet aligator named Elvis.

The film takes itself so seriously and yet - no cops ever die, even in wide open space in a firefight, they are "lucky". Please.

The acting is subpar at best, when you can hear it - half the time they mumble to each other and who the fuck knows what they are saying - and honestly who cares.

The film has about 10 minutes of true Michael Mann quality filmaking that just grips and roars - the rest is empty fluff, in a storyless and forgetable film thats the end of the most forgetable summer in movie history.

When Michael Mann cant even make a meaningfull film, I just dont know whats left. Nobody new is directing anything exciting; this film is the nail in hollywood's coffin.

Supermallet

The "audio mess" as you put it is the done exactly the way the director intended it. Some people write reviews on a set system, where each DVD is weighed against every other DVD they watch. I review DVDs based on how well they bring to home video the intended look and sound of the film. This is how Mann wants you to see and hear the movie, period. You didn't like the movie. That's fine. But that doesn't make my opinion wrong. In the end, that's all these reviews are: opinions. I personally loved Miami Vice. I think Mann does a lot of stuff in the film and he does it really well. I'm more than happy with my review and I'll stand by that rating any day.

Filmmaker

Someone liked MIAMI VICE?! I'm all for "different strokes for different folks", but I didn't think this was humanly possible. You do make a compelling defense of giving a high rating to poor (but proper) audio, though...

MrChaos

Even though I hated the film, I will agree with Daniel here by saying that the video and audio are just fine. Similar to Collateral. If I was still reviewing here I'd mark it with a 'Rent It', but to each their own.

Dan1boy

boy, this was an awful film..couldn't get through 30 minutes of it...falling asleep...

MICHAEL MANN, COME BACK TO THE LIGHT

joshtown

Amazing Mann film. This guys movies just reek of coolness.
I agree 100% with the reviewer.
I'd go so far as to say there is no American working in the business with more style and knowledge of the crime drama than Michael Mann. Yes, even Scorcese.
Miami Vice, believe it or not is a very complex and detailed film. I think people thought it was going to be an action extravaganza.
I'm happy with exactly what it is.
Definitely one of the more impressive HD-DVD's I own.

mr jelly

Sorry Dan, I look back and my comments were a bit harsh. Thank you for clarifying how you review and what you look for - in that case - you are spot on - they did replicate the theatrical audio / video experience (regardless of how good or bad that experience was).

Love it or Hate it, the making of this film was an incredible mess - and the stories about it are fascinating. Check out EWs article here:
http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1217272_1_0_,00.html

joshtown - Id like to here more about what you thought made Miami Vice complex? I found some of the sequences Mann staged technically complex in their execution- particularly when they stormed the house where Jaimie's woman was being held- that blew me away in its intensity and the strong edits that pull that scene together. But as far as a storyline - I must be missing how it is complex - it seemed very simple and problematic - much of the storyline was unresolved - and Mann admits to the filming itself being a disaster in which he couldnt film the conclusion the way he wanted to so he rewrote it into a shootout in the states. Honestly I was hoping the Director's cut would fill in some of the plotholes.

PornoStar

Couldn't possible disagree with this more. Besides agreeing that Mann is a brilliant director we are on opposite sides of the field on this one. Never resolves? If I remember correctly this movie was about the Miami drug group that murdered the 3 CIA guys and the one guys wife in the beginning (Cant remember his name). Anyways the whole reason they went undercover was to get to the Miami group plain and simple. They did that and thus it resolves the majority of the story. They stayed undercover longer to try and get the big guy but were unsuccessful on that end which only makes the film that much more realistic as alot of those drug lords are basically untouchable and disappear without a trace at times.

This is a brilliant rendition of Miami Vice and one that I never suspected. Truth be told I didn't know what to expect from Miami Vice the movie but I didn't expect this. It had great performances, a deep plot and great action scenes even if they were few and far between. While I do agree that this would have fared better on film, I dont fault directors for trying to get into HD filming and trying something new. I am a Professional photographer and I personally hate digital but it came to a point where even I had to start incorporating it into my work as it is the future and I had to be able to offer that option to my clients. That being said the only scenes that really were hurt by the HD cameras were the night scenes which really lack the deep blacks that films can give. Everything shot in daylight looked beautifully grainy and I wouldn't change a thing to those shots. Only when something is overly grainy or unnaturally grainy does it take away from the film and the daylight shots are neither of those two. Its a completely natural looking grain which I personally love in my movies. I actually hate transfers that are too clean and devoid of grain as it makes everything look unnatural and fake.

Is this movie perfect? nope but its an engaging look at undercover work. This film has so many subtle moments that it takes a couple viewings to really take everything in and even after viewing it multiple times I was still finding new things that I didnt see the previous time. Its one of Manns deepest films yet and again it ended up being something Inever suspected it would be wich I think is one of the main reasons why I liked it more and more on repeated viewings.

Bottom line I agree 100% with the HD-DVD review on this film and it absolutely should be in the Collector Series even with a soundtrack where the dialogue could have been turned up a couple notches. The HD-DVD release offers so much to an already fabulous movie that the sound problem is easily overlooked. I personally didn't even have that hard of a time with it. Sure the dialogue could have been louder but I still understood every single line in the film. Maybe some people just have worst hearing than others.

As I said over on the HD-DVD board, this film isn't for everyone and there are bound to be people that dont like it given its such a different take on the subject and so different from what many people expected. I just am not one of those people. I loved the story, loved the performances and loved the directing. I can look past a couple faults because the whole package is so great. My main problems with the film were cleared up with the release of the new cut so my complaints were rectified. Miami Vice is without a doubt in my top 5 for the year!

PS..

Danalegre

This is the worst film I ever seen in a long time.
The plot, the soundtrack, the editing, all terrible.

JM1

Yep, I'm also gonna agree with Pornostar. I am a Mann fan from way back and this is hardly his best movie, but it's still a perfectly decent thriller in it's own right.

Most peoples critiscisms of this movie seem to be based on incorrect perceptions of the kind of movie they expected it to be. It turned out to be something different, and naturally the old different = bad equation comes into play here.

So for their benefit...

- It's NOT an action movie, it's a thriller (that's for the 'nothing happened for x hours' crowd)

- the realistic dialogue and digital grain are actually deliberate and a concious shooting style on Mann's part (that's for the 'I could'nt hear the dialogue and the pic sucked' crowd - I have a bog standard 5.1 system and could hear every word), so comments about the pic being awful are ridiculous - if you don't like digital photography and that style is not for you, then say so. But it does not equal bad, it's a stylistic choice on Mann's part and you disagree with it.

- It is Miami Vice. (this is for the ' it bore no resemblance to the tv series' crowd) It is a movie about 2 undercover vice cops in Miami, it is very stylish, it uses the music, fashions, cars, boats etc of the day to give it a contemporary sheen and polish. Excuse me, but isn't that also the exact definition of what the original TV series did?

And finally let me say this...I recently bought series 1 and 2 of Miami Vice on DVD, and after the usual quick nostalgia fix I have to say this series has not worn well at all. Like a lot of episodic TV series it quickly became formulaic and tiresome, and I found it a struggle to get to the end of the second series. Won't be buying any more, that's for sure.

Filmmaker

What a load of horeshit semantics...it's a bad sylistic choice (the audio; I had no problems with the photography). Hoorah for your golden sound system and/or Kryptonian ear drums but the fact it, most of us couldn't make out four out of five words in the theatres and it sounds like the same problem is occuring on the home front. I don't give a shit how nuanced and layered your screenplay is--if I can't hear it "read", then it might as well be the ingredients label on a box of Froot Loops...

dadaluholla

I thought it was a pretty damn good movie, but definitely hard to understand what people are saying in some parts. Still one of my favorites for the year of 2006.

Randy Miller III

What?

FantasticVSDoom

Who would have thought that MV would be such a "polarizing" movie? I loved it as did my wife, who usually hates this type of movie. The only 2 things that made me see this film in the first place were Mann and Gong Li, and they both delivered and 2 actors, who I usually dont like (Foxx and Farrell) did a decent job, eventhough these werent really meaty roles. The only problem I had with the film was the way it just kind of "kicked in" at the beginning was cleaned up a bit on the DC so this is up there with The Departed as fav films of the year.

JM1

Horseshit indeed! A bad stylistic choice?! Because YOU personally did not like it and had a problem hearing the dialogue you are saying it is therefore bad? Does the word overopinionated mean anything to you?

I also think you have missed the point about my sound system - bog standard means it is nothing special, it's is a basic 5.1 setup that is now about 6 years old , nothing special whatsoever, and yet I still had no problems with the dialogue - and I am not a young person with super hearing, probably slightly less than perfect if anything.

How exactly do you define a bad sound mix anyway? If a sound mix was so bad that people could not hear dialogue how the hell would a movie like that get released? Don't you think the director, soundmen, techicians putting the movie together would realise something was wrong? That just does not scan.

We are talking about a stylistic choice that Mann has made to make the dialogue realistic, as it would be spoken on the street as if you were there and without huge close ups of the actors mouthing the words and enunciating them in an 'actorly' way - it means you have to pay attention a little more, and that's where the problem lies - that tells you more about the attention span of an audience and their unwillingness to concentrate than it does about the so called 'inaudible dialogue'.

There just seems to be this bandwagon-jumping aspect when it comes to the critiscisms levelled at this movie, with everyone making the same comments about inaudible dialogue, complicated story and grainy photography.

Filmmaker

Hmm...please explain how paragraph one and paragraph two correlate? Is it just ME personally, or is it everyone (or even a healthy majority)?

X

I've been trying to avoid getting involved in this but I thought Miami Vice was a mess.

I was wondering how they were going to fill up over 2 hours and unfortunately, it was in a way I had hoped they wouldn't. Many times during the movie I told my son who was watching with me, "So this how it got so long." That's when the movie just wandered off like someone forgot what the plot was and was more concerned with extending what was going on at the time or adding something superfluous.

The audio problems or mumbling or whatever it was made me turn on subtitles for a large part of the movie even though it was turned to a pretty high volume.

I had real problem with the mole angle. We find out what organization has the mole, we know Castillo came from there, and then nothing. Like the mole didn't matter anymore. For the longest time I kept wondering whether Isabella was supposed to be Chinese or Latin. I think the answer is Latin but that just didn't work for me.

I was very dissatisfied with this movie and I'm glad I only rented it. I didn't hate it so much that I turned it off before it was over, so it wasn't the worst I've seen the last 6 months, but it was up there.

JM1

??? They are not meant to correlate, they are two completely seperate statements, and I cannot see any contradiction if that is what you are inferring.

In the first paragraph I was making the point that because you personally had an issue with hearing the dialogue you conclude that it is therefore bad. My point is that the dialogue is purposely designed that way to be realistic, as it would be spoken on the street, not always clearly enunciated but the important part is that it can be heard and understood - I had no problem with it because I understood why the dialogue was recorded in such a way, and while I agree it means you have to concentrate a little more I still maintain you can follow the dialogue.

Maybe it's because we are spoon fed with loud, blockbuster movies these days that hit us over the head with all sorts of effects, camera movements, cgi trickery and shouted dialogue that we are used to sitting back and letting it wash over us, it's designed to be easily watchable and easily understood. But when a movie comes along like this that people percieve to be a typical summer Blockbuster simply because of the name, people often have problems with them because they end up not being what was expected - and I will admit that despite Mann's intentions the publicity and marketing people will have sold it as an action packed summer blockbuster even though it is clearly not, but that's not his fault.

Now when this happens, people expect certain things from a movie - another good example I can think of is the first Mission Impossible movie. Sold as an event movie, people went along, expecting a big, dumb rollercoaster ride of a movie...and realised too late that it actually had a story that you needed to follow. But by the time they realised that it was too late, they had lost the plot and could not follow it - ergo the ridiculous, pervasive perception that exists to this day that the movie had an impenetrable, impossible to follow plot.

In truth, the main reason people do not enjoy movies is because they often expect something different from them - maybe they are being sold the movie under false pretences, they actually believe all the hype and hyperbole written about these films without actually doing a little bit of basic reading before going to see a film to get an idea of what to expect. And because that movie does not live up to what they were expecting or were told, it's therefore bad, rubbish etc.

Miami Vice is recieving some extremely harsh critiscism from a lot of quarters for this very reason - people were dissapointed by it because it was not what they expected - but is that fair, does that make the movie bad?

As for the second paragraph, this relates to the perception of a movie in the publics eyes - once a movie starts to get talked about and written about endlessly in magazines and on internet sites, certain repeated generic critiscisms will seep into peoples conciousness and will be accepted as fact simply by repetition. If you were to ask someone who has not seen the movie about it, they will probably have still heard about the issues with 'inaudible dialogue' and 'convoluted plot'. And critics do the same, they will resort to lazy writing and go along with the general consensus rather than actually watch the movie objectively and form their own opinions.

Filmmaker

I still disagree, and I believe most would disagree with you--there would be no tide of criticism in this matter if the "important parts" were clearly heard and understood.

This is just embarrassing--yeah, everyone's complaining about the audio mix not because it actually is a garbled mess but because a few people in the media complained about it so a whole shitload more people are gonna just assume that's true and make it their complaint, too. I hate having to resort to this particular smiley, but

JM1

Interesting - the inference seems to be that because most people think there is a problem with the audio mix everyone else should follow suit. So they are all right and I and others who don't agree are wrong?

If indeed we are saying there is an issue with the audio, why isn't a recall being issued? Why aren't there threads on here about the sound problems from DVD talkers? Simply because there is no problem with the sound, just that some people seem to have a problem with this type of naturalistic dialogue.

It's clear we aren't going to agree on this dude, I have no problem with the sound, you do. Ain't no point going on about it.







Like I say above, where is the evidence of an actual official problem with the sound on this film? Because there isn't one - I really don't care what anyone else says, I have listened to it and stated my opinion based on what I hear. I don't give a rats about what anyone else says. You can ridicule this statement all you want but I stand by it fella.

I am basing my opinion on the DVD, which is what this thread is about, and I support and agree with Daniels review of the movie. At the end of the day i think he has done the correct thing and reviewed the movie and DVD fresh, and has not been influenced by the critical reaction and public perception of the movie.

Filmmaker

There is not a problem with how the audio has been encoded and you and I both know that was never the argument--Micahel Mann's original audio mix for the film is what is problematic. I don't argue whether I'm "right" and you're "wrong"--this is issue is too subjective for that--but the audio issue is clearly problematic enough to be deserving of criticism.

Supermallet

I think his point, Filmmaker, is that Mann knew exactly what he was doing when he made the sound mix, and whether or not you might like it, it's not problematic. It's just not to your taste. That would be like saying his shooting on HD is problematic because you didn't like it.

JM1

Filmakers perception of the sound being 'problematic' seems not only to be based on his own personal opinion but also the general consensus of a large section of the moviegoing public. I know lots of others have made the same comment, but this is a flawed argument because it assumes the majority are correct.

I maintain that these people also did not understand what Mann was trying to achieve with the style of the dialogue and simply were not willing to concentrate a little more - a lot of Mann's movies demand concentration, they don't wash over you and are spoon-fed to you like other movies. People approached Miami Vice as a feelgood summer blockbuster movie, which it clearly is not.

They approached it in the wrong fashion, and subsequently did not get the entertainment value they were after.

I also challenge Filmaker again to give me evidence of any official complaints about the sound on the dvd - are there any recalls, are people taking their films back to the stores, are there any threads about this anywhere?

If we were to assume that so many people cannot be wrong, then do we also assume the millions of people that pay to see bad movies are demand sequels are also right?

Filmmaker

Again with the semantics. I maintain it is problematic from a directoral point of view, not a dvd authoring one*. Mann made a decision regarding the sound design and it was a bad call, Ripley; it was a bad call.

* = As I already stated above with: "There is not a problem with how the audio has been encoded and you and I both know that was never the argument--Michael Mann's original audio mix for the film is what is problematic."

Supermallet

Filmmaker, I know you're not arguing that the DVD is wrongly encoded. I know that you know that the DVD is representing the theatrical sound. Where the argument comes in is that we're arguing that the sound mix, completely independent of the medium of theater or DVD/HD DVD, is not flawed, but you're arguing that it is. We're saying the very philosophy Mann used to mix the movie is not a flawed philosophy, while you argue that it is a flawed philosophy. I think a good portion of the last few posts have seen two people talking about two entirely different things.