near of the best TV series-to-movie...

near of the best TV series-to-movie makeovers present itself when the filmmakers take just the core idea and the characters of the TV exhibit and create a world unto itself. Think "The Fugitive."

a certain number of of the worst such efforts -- and there have been for a like reason many in recent years that they haunt me in my dreams -- happen when they take utter junk and inflect it into campy, obnoxious crap. Think "Charlie's Angels." "Charlie's Angels 2" "The Duke of Hazzard." And in the same manner on.

Save for Nonpoint's update of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" through the closing credits, Michael Mann's megabudget remake of "Miami Vice" doesn't make any winking hints to the seminal piece of inspection candy from the 1980s, which was executive produc according to Mann and featured Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas (the Man With Three First Names) as the pastel-wearing undercover police officers Crockett and Tubb respectively. (Thomas' self was such that he sported a necklace that intervaled out "EGOT" -- for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. Last I checked, he's alone two consonants and two vowels shrinking of reaching his goal.)

While this "Vice" isn't in the same league as Mann's "Collateral" (2004) or "Heat" (1995) it's a gritty, ultra-dark thriller, and it contains brace of the best "kill shot" sights in recent years. Mann's movies earn their R ratings.

Colin Farrell plays Crockett and Jamie Foxx is Tubb and like their TV predecessors, they have affection for the fast cars and the slick clothes and the speedboats and the thrill of the search for bad guys -- unless Johnson and Thomas were a wisecracking Felix and Oscar compared to this morose pair. When Foxx murmurs "I hate this job" late in the story, he's telling us something we already know.

The opening order of succession plunges us neck-deep into the lives of Crockett and Tubb who assume to be on duty about 22 hours a day. (The other sum of two units hours are reserved for steamy shower sights with their respective lovers.) They're forward a stakeout in a Miami nightclub, unless they're pulled away when Crockett finishs a call from a longtime informant, who's been working for the FBI as the middleman in an insanely complicated medicine deal involving everyone from southern Florida white supremacists to ruthles Colombian crime lords to operatives working gone out of Ciudad del Este, located at the point where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina confront (And that's a very bad place to meet) In fact a great deal of "Miami Vice" takes place outside of Miami, as Crockett and Tubb memorize themselves deputized by the FBI in this way they can go (as Eddie Murphy said in "Beverly Hills Cop") sagacious deep DEEP undercover to bust up an international physic ring.

It takes Crockett about six minutes to fall in be enamoured of with Isabella, a sophisticated vixen in super-tight skirts who handles the financial details for an international remedy lord and also happens to be his girlfriend, although he doesn't seem to mind if she prepares involved with the clientele as protracted as she keeps it casual. Isabella is played at Chinese superstar Gong Li, who do one's bests nobly -- but nonetheless contests -- with her English. There are times when it is nearly impossible to understand what she is saying.

And this "Vice" is already fulness confusing, what with the ever- changing dominations of the drug deals, and the deliberately flat and quiet line readings from Farrell and Foxx not to mention Dion Beebe's gorgeous on the contrary dark high-definition digital cinematography, dripping in dark amethystines and shades of gray. There were considerations when I had very little idea of who was buying what put drugs intos at what point from whom, and for that matter for what cause [i]or[/i] reason anyone was doing what he or she was doing.

Beyond that, who are these guys? wherefore did Crockett and Tubbs become cops? For the guns? We know these scarecrows are best friends only because they charm it out: "I'm with you 100 percent" "I'd in no degree doubt you." Unlike most famous cop-buddy tandems (eg Gibson and Glover in the "Lethal Weapon" series), they don't look to enjoy much of anything about their work or their friendship. They're tough scarecrows doing ugly work, and that's that.

Luis Tosar's Colombian kingpin is a disposable villain who inexplicably disappears from the final followings His evil right- hand man, Jose (John Ortiz), sports designer glasses and arrives across more like a petulant grad bookish man than a bloodthirsty madman. More interesting in less roles are Mann regular Barry Shabaka Henley as the Miami police lieutenant who gives his stays a very long leash, Ciaran Hinds as an FBI liaison and Elizabeth Rodriguez as a Miami cop who has maybe the best variation in addition on Dirty Harry's "Well, do ya, punk?" tongue Her big moment actually win with a trumps anything Farrell or Foxx do with their oversized fire-arms

The plat machinations of "Miami Vice" left me confused and a bit frustrated, still there's 2 1/2 stars' worth of movie here simply because Mann is the premier visual architect of night action seriess and because he adds a touch of art to level the simplest shots, day or night. A small plane buzzing above the throngs overhead shots of a medicine lord's compound, a dance arrangement in a nightclub -- all are execut with exquisite grace.