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Visual Pleasure and Miami Vice

Adorno once said he never left a cinema without feeling less humane; Seneca warned against the visual pleasures of violent blood-sports and crowd spectacles.

Michael Mann is clearly no respecter of Seneca or Adorno, having tossed us several dozen bodies to enjoy seeing employed in illicit activities, in his latest auteur-voyeur semi-classic, Miami Vice.

First, I confess to having enjoyed Audioslave on the soundtrack - but feel the sound in the sight and sound helix that is film was severely cropped here - what was MTV-cops is now more like illegal-downloads-intercepted - so songs dribble in, as if Tubb's iPod was low on juice.

The truth is, no one films the surface of things as well as Mann in legitimate cinema; and no one else explores the circles of hell bad men travel to work each day through - Bogota Unreal City - with such cerebral venom in the veins: half the film is Crockett and Tubbs (re-enacted like mannequins by stars of the day) being patted down, escorted and forced to swagger like Mephisto on Meth.

Mann is also great at presenting villains you want to see get shot in the head: he focuses on one Neo-Nazi's eyebrow pimple so many times it beckons for ballistic removal. What faces his villains and Feds possess! - each tell s a Carver story if Carver had done time in San Quentin - and Ciaran Hinds - late of Munich, has the best.

The final sequence channels Iraq small-arms-fire: the tinny pop and snap of the guns, and then the heightened endless chatter of the Uzis, and the random silence, is eerie and masterful.

Gong Li (pictured) and assorted women in peril, the go-fast boats and splendind planes put one in mind of pseudo-Bond, and heighten one's awareness that this is really just pitch meeting madness: Soldier of Fortune Meets GQ; Mann does surface tension, but is less good at the wake churned up by speed's brute passing - the hospital sequences are bland and naive.

The best sequence features the kingpin and Gong Li planning their business/perfidious week while reading the latest Wall Street Journals scattered across their massive bed in some deep jungle overlooking fifty major waterfalls, while stock info darts across the screens installed in the Xanadau-style bedroom; it is in this Shakesperean scene of men and women so evil they represent a challenge to the alternative, as lightning flashes beyond the fronds, we expect C. Kane's parakeet to screech.
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