10 Bad Films By Great Directors

Miami Vice is a dazzling achievement in sound and light but it's also a pretty bad film, perhaps director Michael Mann's worst effort to date (admittedly I am yet to see Blackhat). It's a visually gorgeous movie, but that's all it is, the rest a shimmering, far-too-serious affair which fails to invoke the light-hearted nature of the original series. There's only so far visual splendour can take you, and Miami Vice is a testament to that.

Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are spectacularly miscast (as Crockett and Tubbs respectively), and Mann makes the fatal mistake of having the partners genuinely not like each other. Their partnership should be the film's selling point, but it ends up as it's biggest flaw, and the stars don't seem to be enjoying themselves too much either. Miami Vice might be the most overtly serious blockbuster ever made.

The film is a joyless, inert affair, too wrapped up in its own earnestness to be considered entertaining, and too shallow and meandering to be thought-provoking or challenging. Mann's exertions in digital haven't come close to matching those of his celluloid days (though Collateral is a fine thriller), and Miami Vice feels as far away from Heat as it does the TV show.