Remember when Brett Ratner used to have parties in his basement? No? I do, because I was there. As a teenager basically, in the early aughts, partying with my friend V., a Russian girl who made out with everyone in those days. But that’s not only what this posty-post is about. Nope nope nope this is also about the movie Miami Vice (2006) by Michael Mann.
Photo Credit
Miami Vice by Michael Mann is a completely insane movie. I just don’t even know where to start. Watched it last night and the very first scene is a club scene. I really like how that story just sort of pops onto the screen with an active club scene, no titles, or at least very little, as little as the time it took for me to take two bags of snacks, Trader Joe’s popcorn and Trader Joe’s Cheetos, and throw them into a bowl so my wife didn’t get annoyed by the noise I make while sticking my hands into the bag (during the film duh).
I’m back on the couch now, feeling pretty good about popcorn and Cheetos (okay, they’re not actually called that they’re called something generic like ‘orange things with cheese’) but the real point that I can’t seem to get to is that Miami Vice started in a god damn nightclub which for this (former) club kid was a great way to go.
MY eye is being drawn to all kinds of shenanigans, there’s Jamie Foxx looking as ageless as ever, and then there’s Colin Farrell looking different.
This is where things get interesting.
Colin Farrell has blonde streaks in his hair and is walking like a football player who just blew out his knee. No, not a football player. Like a straight 40+ dad with tattoos who used to work in kitchens, and now works as a graphic designer for google. Which reminds me of this actual person who I worked with once (remotely) right after Part I of the pandemic.
Many were still in Masks when this job started in early 2021, a lot of us were waiting for a vaccine. Not everyone though. There were already weddings being scheduled and I had to miss one I really wanted to go to that summer, which in retrospect feels a bit paranoid on my part, but to make a long story short, Colin Farrell did not look like Colin Farrell and the guy who I worked with for the K. Bank was a former chef who left that world despite having worked for a Michelin starred kitchen. Burn out he said. Starting a family is what he said. I had just had my son.
I don’t think Colin Farrell had kids when he had shot Miami Vice, but i’ll need to check on that and get back to y’all. What matters now is that I have never seen him walk the way he did in Miami Vice, which either means Colin Farrell is always sorta walking the way he usually does in most of his roles, and Miami Vice was the outlier, the performer in him, or it’s the other way around. Colin Farrell actually does walk like a stud muffin.
I am probably thinking about this way too hard but if you haven’t seen the film, you should watch it to see if you agree with what I mean. Macho doesn’t begin to describe his gait in Miami Vice. It’s like the director said, “be a man, be a man,” over and over again to him or something. Though what the hell is masculinity. And what then is Miami Vice if not some strange meditation on masculinity. Some gateway to another mode of being we were supposed to behave like before we were set free by the Me Too era.
The version of masculinity that must’ve been the norm in 2006 when Brett Ratner was having these stupid parties in his basement.
The movie was released in 2006. Which really means it was shot in 2005. And then 2003 or 2002 is prolly when Michael Mann was hired to write it. I was still in college then, and I can damn sure tell you masculinity was a whole diff thing back in 2002 than it is in 2023.
15ish years before #MeToo, that’s when Miami Vice was made. That’s the stage I’m trying to set for you before we learn more about what the hell I was learning at Brett Ratner’s after parties.
AFTER THE CLUB SCENE there’s a big-big drug deal. Real shocka. We get a guy played by John Hawkes who throws himself in front of a bus for some reason, and then I don’t even know, there’s some this and that before Jamie Foxxxxx and Collin Farrell are assigned an assignment. They’re on the Vice squad, duh, and they’re going undercover to intercept a big huge scary big bad wolf of a drug deal.
Wait, sex. I forgot to mention that before they go underground there’s a great sex scene between Jamie Foxx and Naomi Harris (hat tip to my wife for recognizing her) and that’s super cool because I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything other than Moonlight. She’s fifteen years younger in Miami Vice than she is in Moonlight and just as beautiful.
Skip to Colin Farrell’s sex scene with the wife of a big time Russian drug dealer played by a guy who looks so much like that dude from High Maintenance.
They’re like super into each other and the sexual tension between them while they ride a boat called Mojo through waves of pearly white water is high, and that is not a joke.
The boat is really called MOJO.
I had to include the pic because I could probably write 10K words just on Mojo.
There’s Colin Farrell with the drug dealers wife (played by Gong Li) (interesting I wonder what the numbers for this film were in China) can someone look that up!
Gong Li and Collin Farrell get to Havana, they dance and drink to an amazing live performance by a band that sounds like the Gypsy Kings, and may actually be?
Because that’s how gloriously cheesy this movie is. It’s so cheesy that half of the soundtrack is Audioslave. I’m a fan of Chris Cornell and I am a fan of this movie. The cheesiness works.
It’s a movie about two Macho ass guys on the Miami vice police squad. There’s immensely fast boats in the film that sorta feel phalic, and sex scenes conjured out of a Russian bath house.
Boats called Mojo speeding across the water between Cuba and Miami.
The water is blue-blue-blue-blue, and the next thing you know the drug dealer’s wife is caught for being a bad girl by one of the drug dealer’s henchmen in one of those lazy story moments that seem totally nonsensical and borderline narcissistic.
Colin Farrell and her are basically fucking on the dance floor in front of the drug dealer’s top business partner / henchman. Naomi Harris is kidnapped too. Both of the girls are in trouble now and our heroes have to hurry or the bomb strapped to Naomi Harris’s chest is going to go off.
Do you want me to ruin the ending for you?
Miami Vice, 2006
Directed by: Michael Mann
Screenplay by: Michael Mann & Anthony Yerkovich
Cinematography by: Dion Beebe
Editing by: William Goldenberg & Paul Rubell
Production Design by: Victor Kempster
Composer: John Murphy
⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Recommend or Don’t Recommend
Have you seen this thing before?
Sock Drawer
Colin Farrell had one kid in 2006 when the movie came out. The child was three. The same age as my son now :)
Brett Ratner’s basement parties did not have much going for them other than the same played out version of masculinity in Miami Vice (2006). As a kid, I felt extremely uncomfortable at them. I never saw anything weird happen or foul play go down, but the whole vibe was pretty sleazy. It was definitely not something I shoulda been doing at the time, but when you’re that young and trying to be a screenwriter you’re just going with the flow of the night, and when someone invites you to a director’s house, nine times out of ten you’re going to go. Miami Vice (2006), basement parties at Brett Ratner’s house, that’s what people did back then.
Trailer ⬇️