Miami Vice: The Spence Edit

This edit is much, much better than the original. Is it as good as the TV show? That's an impossible task and the editor did as good as possible. I really enjoyed the added music (you can't have Miami Vice without good music!). The plot was much more streamlined and made better sense. A very enjoyable edit that I highly recommend. Thanks for the hard work.

The Miami Vice reboot from 2006 is an unfortunate and best-forgotten travesty. When I saw this fan edit come out, I thought I would try it and see if an editor could improve it. I finally got around to watching it. Bottom line: there is no fixing this movie. However, the editor does manage to slightly improve the film and get rid of some of the more obvious problems. For a movie based on the hit TV series that featured such cool and classic tracks from the ‘80s, the soundtrack for the movie sucks by comparison.

The good:
The editor does a good job of increasing the volume of the songs already in the movie and including some new music where the film falls short. This is especially noticeable in a club scene where Director Michael Mann and editors William Goldenberg/Paul Rubell decided to make the thumping music very, very quiet. It doesn’t make sense. Who goes to a club to hear barely audible music? The editor fixed this, and it works much better now. The cut scenes are not missed. I rewatched the original after this, so I could see what he did. I hadn't watched it since it came out. In the end, though, the editor doesn’t significantly change the film, nor do I think he planned to. The ending is the same and most of the scenes are left as they were. It’s just a general tightening up and fixing of the most obvious problems.

The bad:
The movie has too many problems for a fan editor to bring it up a star, perhaps a half-star. I consider the original to be a 1-star movie. It was one of the biggest disappointments of all time. It was a cash grab from acclaimed director Mann and Universal Pictures. Yet strangely, Mann decided not to appeal to nostalgia for the original show. This decision alone ruined the movie. Making a reboot instead of casting Don Johnson, Phillip Michael Thomas, Edward James Olmos, etc. was a terrible decision. Johnson was 55 when the movie was being cast, certainly not too old to go on another assignment. Jamie Foxx was good as Tubbs, and it is unfortunate that the movie decided to follow Crockett, played by the mediocre Colin Farrell primarily. I don’t understand why Farrell kept getting cast in leading roles when his performance as Alexander the Great in a massive box office bomb was so terrible. Farrell was deeply addicted to heroin during the making of this movie. So much so that he says he can’t even remember making it. His performance has none of Don Johnson’s charm or cool. His hair and Freddy Mercury mustache look ridiculous and scream out “I’m an undercover cop!” The idea that these two police veterans could pass as drug lords is an absolute joke.

The “love story" between Crockett and Isabella, played by Gong Li, makes little sense. They want to have sex with each other almost instantaneously. It’s as if each of them had never seen the opposite sex before. Crockett is willing to blow his entire mission just to get in her pants. She also risks her life to be with him. Her English accent, as well as Farrell's, is pretty bad. The main bad guy, played by John Ortiz, is short and unthreatening. I remember seeing his goon bodyguards who looked like they could crush someone’s skull with two fingers and thinking “Why couldn’t one of them be the villain?” His decision to kidnap and threaten Tubb’s girlfriend was extremely stupid and a bad business decision, to say the least. The plot makes little sense. This seems like a first draft of a script that needed a lot of work.

The movie just sucks, period. I would recommend this edit, though, if you want to see the film for some reason. It is a mild improvement. However, there is little reason to watch it as it features so much bad acting, bad writing, and little action.

I will also mention that in the copy I watched, there was some grain and noise. I am hoping that the editor did not add this, and that it was just a result of bad compression

Miami Vice is one of those films that has, by turns, been equally underrated and overrated. Overlooked by critics and audiences on release; called one of the greatest action films of all time by a select cult ever since its release. As ever, the best bits of Michael Mann movies are transcendently badass, but they're often dragged down by over-indulgent dialogue and romantic subplots that lead to severe pacing problems that prove alienating even as they're supposed to draw audiences into these troubled characters.

Spence wisely cuts and trims MV, whipping it into a taut, lean form that it should have been from the beginning and adding back just enough classic TV musical cues to scratch the 80s nostalgia itch that the original film purposely avoided. By leaving much of the characters' romantic moments on the cutting room floor, the audience is allowed to be collaborators and fill in the emotions based on the firey passion we do see, not the turgid backstories we're forced to endure. Spence's edit is the cut that deserves the cult adoration, it's a legitimately excellent film now, and I hope it circulates widely enough that Mann fans get to experience MIami Vice in its best possible version.

Coming straight off the success of Collateral, I was really excited for Miami Vice. When it came out, however, I was less than impressed. Even though the signature Michael Mann visuals are present, great actors, and featuring a stunning backdrop of Miami and Cuba, Miami Vice never reached the same levels of Collateral or other Mann films in terms of storytelling.

The main problems with Miami Vice are that it is way too long, it lacks focus around the central plot, and really starts off without giving the audience time to develop an emotional relationship with the main characters. Fortunately, with the Spence Edit, some of those issues are resolved. Clocking in at 24 minutes shorter than the theatrical cut, this edit really trims the excess and keeps the story moving along. I would be hard pressed to tell you what was cut and where the changes were made. The narrative flows smoothly and there are no sudden cuts present. The edits, audio, musical cues are all seamlessly integrated.

All in all, I really enjoyed this edit and for me it definitely improved the overall enjoyment of the film. It is very well done and will definitely be the preferred way to watch when revisiting. Thanks!

The cuts made to scenes and subplots has greatly improved the pacing and enjoyment. While none of material cut was bad to begin with, it did not warrant the runtime and resulted in a slow moving action movie. Now Miami Vice has the focus it needs.

I loved the music choices as well and this has lent a feel much closer to the TV series than the theatrical version ever had.