Regular readers of this diary may recall that the last time I reviewed Miami Vice I saw it on the big screen, in the theater, just me and 400 passholes, of which one, a violent cockeyed retard, created a scene.

Yet I still managed to like the movie.

It wasn’t because I was a fan of the show. The movie proves to have little to do with the source show. Instead it is a fantasia on themes originally enunciated in Miami Vice.

Nor was it just because I am a huge Michael Mann buff, though the film is all of a piece with what he has been doing in films as diverse as Heat, Collateral, and even Ali and The Insider, with a similar catalog of moral questions and stylistic choices.

No, it was the sheer physical near-silent beauty of the thing, with its actors like sleek panthers, all movement and style. I love the opening shots of the film, which showed Crockett and Tubbs (Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx) standing off to the edge in a disco watching the crowd. Now, thanks to the DVD which hits the street on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 for $29.95 (available in either a widescreen edition of the release version and in a unrated director’s cut), I have the movie again to enjoy, ponder over, and revel in.

Have you ever seen a wolf in the wild? I did once, while driving along the coast road in my home state with a friend. It had just come up over the edge and was looking sharply at the traffic, seeing if there was a way across the two lanes. I only saw the animal for a second as our car sped by, but I still haven’t forgotten how alert it was. It’s whole affect was there, here, alive, looking, sensing, seemingly every hair buzzed with the reality of what was going on around him, above, behind, in front. It was the sharpest thing I saw on the road.

That’s what Crockett and Tubbs reminded me of at the start of Miami Vice. Now, most viewers complained that because the movie starts in media res like this, they didn’t know what was going on, and remained lost for the rest of the movie. And if you take a glance at the screenplay (not included on the DVD) you can see how much of the dialogue Mann threw out (was that one of the reasons Foxx was reportedly unhappy on the set? Or was he worrying about his performance in Dreamgirls, in which he is reportedly uncomfortable looking?). Mann has a way of shooting people in the middle of action that looks really realistic, and he is fond of a shot that contributes to that feeling, which is one that Tarantino uses at least once per movie too, a close tracking shot behind someone walking somewhere, but in which you can also see the whole field of battle he is walking onto. The film is shot by Dion Beebe, who also worked on Collateral, and it has some stupendous shots in it, which look great on the Universal DVD.

As I said, it is less an episode of Miami Vice, than Mann’s “Answer to Heat.” As I wrote about the original release, “This is the second time that Mann has gone to the well of TV work to fashion a movie. Heat is a masterly re-filming of his TV movie, the 1989 Crimewave (AKA L.A. Takedown). In essence, what Mann has done here is re-write the end of Heat. In that film, crook De Niro and cop Pacino have a face off on a busy airport runway in a sequence that left a lot of people unsatisfied. Here, in a similar situation, a character makes a wholly different decision, and it is indeed much more satisfying. Thus, both because of their roots and because of their contrasting resolutions, Heat and Miami Vice are paired films in Mann’s filmography. Mann tries to balance to entirely different moods, absolute quotidian realism on the one hand, and romanticism on the other. This time he may have got the ending right.”

There are about six new minutes in the unrated version, bringing the film up to 140 Minutes, most of which appear to be in the very beginning, in a sequent which also explains why the task force is in the disco. As far as I can tell, though, the film still doesn’t explain who the criminal mole is in the complex of agencies trying to catch the film’s big drug dealer. The answer may be in there; I just haven’t found it yet.

The widescreen anamorphic transfer (2.40:1) is excellent, and the audio comes in English, Spanish, French Dolby Digital 5.1. Supplements consist of a host of making ofs, including “Miami Vice Undercover,” “Miami & Beyond: Shooting on Location,” “Visualizing Miami Vice,” some so-called behind the scenes featurettes (“Gun Training,” “Haitian Hotel Camera BLocking,” and “Mojo Race”, with the biggest supplement being a commentary track from Mann. Mann’s been doing these a lot lately, and he comes prepared, remembers a lot, and likes to tell stories. As far as I can tell, though, he doesn’t go into any detail about Foxx’s supposed dissatisfaction on the set.

If you’ve got this far, let it be known that if you are the first person to email me at dkholmcontests@mac.com, you get a free DVD of the uncut Miami Vice, care of Universal Home Video [10:18 PM PST: We have a winner]. Obviously I can’t reply to everyone, so if you don’t hear from me within a few hours, odds are that you’re not the first.

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