Miami Vice
Universal Pictures | Release Date: July 28, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critics
Positive:
25
Mixed:
9
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
It sheds the series' famous and influential pastel look and plunges its cast of villains and warriors into the 21st century. Read full review
90
Village VoiceScott Foundas
Mann has done something transformative with Farrell: The Irish actor has never had this much charisma and natural authority in a role, and as he navigates that gray area between Crockett's real identity and his fabricated one, revealing subtle fissures in the character's cocksure facade, he's fascinating to watch. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
If you're looking for a crime story that sizzles with action, sex and the visceral jolt of life on the edge, Miami Vice is the one. Read full review
88
New York PostKyle Smith
Miami Vice isn't an action flick but a neo-noir: tough, quiet, moody and hard. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Sensual and scary, the movie is so visually textured you feel as though you're brushing against the screen. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
While it never approaches the richness and gravity of a great Mann film like "Heat," Miami Vice blurs the thin blue line to similar effect, and he features a couple of bravura setpieces, including a tense raid on an enemy hideout and a shootout with chaotic, you-are-there immediacy. If only all summer movies were this majestically slight. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Right away in Miami Vice you know you're waist-deep in movieland. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
It's a sensational trip -- gorgeous, gaga. Read full review
80
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Mixing pop savvy with startling formal ambition, Mr. Mann transforms what is essentially a long, fairly predictable cop-show episode into a dazzling (and sometimes daft) Wagnerian spectacle. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
It's the set pieces that mark the film as something special: swirling crowds at a casino in the opening sequence, Trudy's ordeal by trailer trash, a climactic firefight that puts lightning in the shade. Very impure, and very impressive.
80
SlateDana Stevens
The world according to Mann is loud, dangerous, morally ambiguous, and more than a little greasy, but during the hours you spend there, there's nowhere you'd rather be. Read full review
80
EmpireSimon Braund
Bearing all the Mann hallmarks, this is visually enthralling, relentlessly stylish crime drama. A little too languorous for its own good at times, but still vastly superior entertainment. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The two best words to describe the 2006 motion picture Miami Vice are "stylish" and "intense." Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
As entertaining as some of it is, is so cool that it's almost too cool. It takes the sin, and much of the juice, out of vice. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
This is more of a thinking man's action flick -- a small, intense film made on a giant canvas that finds Mann experimenting with and pushing at the boundaries of mainstream filmmaking. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The movie is seriously sexy and seriously entertaining. Read full review
70
VarietyBrian Lowry
Unlike most TV-to-movie transitions, Mann returns to his roots and delivers what amounts to a slightly overblown episode, brimming with style and characteristically short on substance. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Without the ability to move off the mythic, without the emotional texture that "Heat" created, it is a film easier to admire than to get passionately involved with. Read full review
70
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Mann turns Miami Vice into an exploration of tone and mood, and he makes that enough. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
As it turns out, the movie is still very much about two well-dressed undercover cops who strike sexy poses, express plenty of attitude and drive expensive cars and fast boats as pop music plays on the soundtrack and palm trees sway gently in the tropical night. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's got some great action sequences and is peppered with genuinely dazzling images. It's also subtly infused with Mann's favored themes of men-at-work and the high price of loyalty to duty. But it hasn't got sufficient meat to warrant its draggy length. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
It's refreshing to hear some old-fashioned percussive tension in service of a director who knows what he's doing. Even when the screenwriter is losing his way. Read full review
63
PremiereEthan Alter
Just when the plot should start coming together, the pacing goes slack and the narrative gets bogged down in routine cop-movie clichés. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Miami Vice is the last of the predicted summer blockbusters, and it delivers a reasonable amount of popcorn excitement. But if nostalgia for the TV show is the source of your interest, expect some disappointment. Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
A combination of muddy sound mix and players with heavy accents (particularly Chinese superstar Gong, who seems to have learned her lines phonetically) renders large swaths of dialogue incomprehensible, but the details of what's being said and done don't really matter. Read full review
60
The New YorkerDavid Denby
It's about guns and sex and fast boats, and, baffling as it is at times, it's still the kind of brutal fantasy that many of us relish a great deal more than yet another aerated digital dream. Read full review
60
TimeRichard Schickel
Dark, detailed and only really gets going when the gunplay starts. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
A darker, grittier creature that, while benefiting considerably from Dion Beebe's HD cinematography, is a frustratingly inert affair -- a long and talky excursion that fails to engage the viewer from the outset. Read full review
50
NewsweekDavid Ansen
It's filled with Mann's signature macho verisimilitude, but essentially it's the stuff of what, in saner fiscal times, would have been a B movie. Miami Vice delivers the thrills, atmosphere and romance it promises, but it doesn't resonate like major Mann. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Miami Vice, the movie, is an atmospheric muddle, as gorgeous and unintelligible as raven-haired stunner Gong Li. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Farrell appears to be a rarity in undercover culture, a vice cop who goes on the lowdown as an Irish beatnik. Oh, that's a good disguise for South Beach. As for Foxx, he's still channeling Ray Charles through squinty eyes and a kind of shaky head. They have zero chemistry. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Apart from a few sleek shots involving boats or helicopters, the action eventually devolves into a standard war-movie shootout. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
It's the supporting players who stand out. Read full review
50
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Far from a disaster, but doesn't rank with Mann's best work. Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
If you really must see Miami Vice (and you mustn't), buy a ticket to something better, then slip into "Vice" at the 95-minute mark and watch the last third of the movie. No one involved will profit by your curiosity, and you won't miss a thing of importance. Read full review
38
USA TodayScott Bowles
All this movie has in common with its ancestor are speedboats, shotguns and drug-dealing Colombians. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Perhaps vice isn't what it used to be, or maybe Crockett and Tubbs just aren't all that interesting when removed from their appropriate time slot, but this may well be the dreariest and most monochromatic time you'll have at the movies all summer. Read full review
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