"Probability", Colin Farrell tells us, "is like gravity."Just one of the many fascinating and completely baffling insights that pepper the ‘script’ of Michael Mann’s cinematic adaptation of his ’70s TV series. I put script in inverted commas for a reason. It is completely irrelevant in this film, they might as well have been speaking Swahili. The hispanic baddies whisper everything in a drug-dealer drawl that’s either inaudible, incomprehensible, or both ("Zay recover our low" = "They recovered our load"). Jamie Foxxxx speaks in abbreviations (‘OpSec’ = Operational Security, ‘Counter-Intell’ etc. etc.) while Colin Farrell just shouts things or stays quiet looking moody and perplexed. ‘Perploody’ as Jamie might say.
The film is ridiculous. The outfits are ridiculous, the plot is ridiculous, the guns, girls and the dance moves are ridiculous. The fact that the weird quiet guy from Vera Drake turns up as a Miami crimelord is ridiculous. And yet.
It looks fantastic (if a little ridiculous). It’s pacy, gripping and frankly very sexy. Miami sizzles and titillates under Mann’s inventive direction, bullets bang and whizz, drug barons menace, white supremacists get caps in their asses. It’s a summer popcorn blockbuster that shouldn’t leave you feeling short-changed. Foxx and Farrell aren’t as tight as Gibson as Glover, nor as funny as Smith and Lawrence, but Mann achieves what he sets out to do. No credits, just action – sex, drugs and death – from start to finish.
A big-budget, blockbusting brainless treat.
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