Miami Vice: Season Five
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Movie Reviews of Miami Vice: Season Five
Movie Review: A few good episodes. Didnt age well.
Summary: 2 Stars
I was in a Miami Vice mood, and after listening to Tim Truman's Season Five soundtrack (songs like Freefall), I thought I would relive my late 80s teenage years and watch the final season of what was one my favorite TV show. Miami Vice has a few great actors: Don Johnson was one of them. Edward James Olmos was surely another. Philip Michael Thomas was also good; as were Michael Talbot (Switez) and Sandra Santiago, who had just one line in the final episode. Im remembering how great she was in the pilot episode of season one. There is a scene with her and Sonny Crocket on his boat, "you can give me that fast talking cowboy story from now until doomsday...but I don't believe it." Another actress on the set probably wouldn't have pulled it off. And that is the problem I have with Season Five. There are a lot of episodes where secondary characters -- all bad guys -- just have too many lines and too much screen time. Like who is that blonde gold digger in ep 1 season 5 trying to win over Sonny Burnett (Crocket's deep cover name)? We, at least I, don't believe that Sonny can be so into this woman that he is willing to risk his life to include her in his plot to overthrow a mid-sized drug cartel. And what is with that terrible actor with the Flock of Seagulls hairdo who plays the son of the drug dealer? This isn't Anthony Yerkovich's handiwork anymore, clearly, and it shows. Too many bad guys we don't know, with too many lines. Season one's bad guy was Calderon, the Colombian drug lord. Like Jaws, we knew he was in the water, but we only saw him twice and he only had one line: "You can't shoot me you lousy $500 a week cop. It's against the law." That was enough, because the story was not about Calderon. Miami Vice is as much a story about relationships as Entourage on HBO is about relationships and not about moving up the ranks in Hollywood. It is about Crocket and Tubbs, Zito and Switek (Zito is dead in season 1 or 2, I believe). The last episode was decent and reminiscent of season 1. You can see where Michael Mann got the idea for the movie. A lot of it comes from the final episode: Freefall. Crocket and Tubbs go out on a limb to work for the DEA to fly to a Central American nation to rescue a dictator the US gov wants safe (because that dictator knows about official money laundering of Central American drugs). Again...bad guy gets WAY too much time. The story is right on target for its time (Reagan years, Iran Contra...MV episodes were political and they understood the cold war and the drug war in Central America and used it as MV's main narrative). It's just that there are too many important lines given to someone who had little screen time, we don't really know, or like, and he isn't the greatest actor either -- as is the case of the DEA chief and the local police chief working for the cartel. Watching Season Five I now realize how hard it is to find good actors; and how the writing is important, but the acting is even more important. A fine actor can do amazing work with a normal, average script. A fair actor will do a fair job with a fair script and will kill a great script. I don't know which is the case in Season Five. In short, Season Five tries to be too big and when it pulls us away from the Crocket and Tubbs relationship and their comraderie, we get lost because we long for that in the series. Thats why Freefall, the ending scene, disappoints. Yes, Crocket and Tubbs quit the force and that all makes perfect sense. They get in the car and drive off -- Miami Vice style. It's okay. But instead of playing THE anthem of Miami Vice -- In The Air Tonight -- or even a newer version of the Miami Vice or Crocket theme by Jan Hammer, they play this song that I personally have never heard of and doubt mainstream MV fans have either. It gets played in a montage of season one and two clips, as a homage to the mainstay actors like Olmos and Santiago, who had no more than three lines in the last episode of one of the most innovative cop shows in US television history. That ending montage fell flat for me. It didnt affect the story, but it showed me enough about what to expect in Season Five: it's no season one and two.
Movie Review: Truths becoming self-evident
Summary: 2 Stars
Season Five of Miami Vice was perhaps the saddest and cynical of all of the series, because you could tell that the end was near, which, of course, was a microcosm of what was happening with the futility of the "drug wars" at the end of the '80s. The mood of the country had grown darker, and it was reflected in the faces of Crockett and Tubbs, who both had to know that they were up against overwhelming odds that they could not overcome.
The frustration that I felt in watching that final season, was in the inconsistencies that I found in the storylines themselves. For one, why wasn't Crockett brought up on charges during his amnesic sojourn in "Mirror Image?" Surely, they could've gotten some mileage out of this where a sixth season could've been possible, but they completely missed the boat on that for some strange reason that is still unknown to us. Then, as far as loose ends went, there is still the unanswered question of exactly what happened to the son that Tubbs had fathered with Angelina, Calderon's daughter, back in season Two. I was surprised that there was no resolution to that mystery, which I found to be profoundly disappointing.
Overall, Switek's gambling issues (fueled in part by a combination of his not getting that plum promotion out of vice/organized crime bureau and mourning over the death of his longtime partner Zito) was a side order that gave viewers a hint that Vice was over and done. Poor Trudy and Gina were virtually nonexistent in Season Five, which was a glaring oversight on Michael Mann's part. But, in the final two episodes, "Freefall" it was all spelled out for us in black and white, particularly in the song "Bad Attitude" where Crockett and Tubbs are grimly riding off into their final showdown, where the lyrics "Out of date heroes/With no room to grow" said it all--that the drug barons of the world, along with their despot/dictator puppets and a complcit U.S. government that is more interested in enabling the drug trade for "American interests...and what runs counter to them," were too powerful and corrupt to be stopped by two idealistic Vice detectives.
Movie Review: THIS SET: Uh, 4 stars? Uh, NO.
Summary: 2 Stars
They should offer a discount for season 5.
Don't get me wrong, Miami Vice is one of my all-time favorite series.
But Season 5 was pretty much an "out to lunch" season. Totally absent was directorial, musical, or writer innovation. Don Jonson looked like he was on chemotherapy or some juiced member of a biker gang. The stories were loud and largely ripped from other (BAD) popular series of the time. Like the magical ray gun. Or rogue cops. The Gambler's Anonymous episode. Or a Holocaust episode (in the Season of Holocaust Specials, three a year at least by the late 80s). Etc.
It reminds one of the sloppy writing in the latter years of MASH. Where we become sooooo concerned about the feelings of Houlahan and the clerk, whatshisname, Klinger, and the rest of the "gang". Whatever.
Bad bad bad. The one bright spot is the delightful "evil Sonny" arc, which opens the set, where a screwed-up amnesiac Sonny Crockett turns into a hit man. That alone is worth the cost of the set, but the rest? TV mediocrity, nothing special, just known characters in predictable plots. Yawn.
Well worth cancellation at that point.
Movie Review: (2.5 stars)
Summary: 2 Stars
This and season four were the two worst seasons of vice. The acting, the look and stories were very bad, and in my opinion vice should have ended after the third season. Unless you are a huge fan of the series, skip it. If you are just a fan buy seasons 1-3, and if you are first experiencing vice, buy season two, the best season of the show.Movie Review: Phoning it in
Summary: 1 Stars
Lets be real. The high point of the creative Miami Vice was in seasons two and three after the show got rolling in season one. The dynamic creative energy began to slip in season four and by season five the combination of poor writing, actors phoning it in, and missing characters caught up with what was once THE most daring show on TV. The plots are silly. Castillo disappears halfway through the season, only to briefly reappear at the final episode. Don Johnson disappears for several of the final episodes and there is an outright awful pilot about pretty boy young undercover cops that must be endured to be seen. I tried to count up how many bad guys Crockett and Tubbs had killed in five years: just about most of Latin America. By season five you could tell the drug dealers because they were wearing the stupidest costumes that could be designed. You have to watch this dvd just for the laughs!