UK: The stars of 'Miami Vice' hit the 'blue' carpet for the film's European premiere in London

Record ID: 219027

  • Title: UK: The stars of 'Miami Vice' hit the 'blue' carpet for the film's European premiere in London
  • Date: 4th August 2006
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (JULY 27, 2006) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Mandarin) ACTRESS GONG LI SAYING: "It's not so much the fact of working in Hollywood, what is important to me is to have a good script and a good character."
  • Embargoed: 19th August 2006 13:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVA5Q32C5J4PI0P4I4XPZRRHUN6S
  • Story Text: In a summer full of sequels, returns and revivals, it was only a matter of time until two of the most iconic characters of the 1980s made their big screen debut.
    Bringing the 2006 version of the undercover detectives Tubbs and Crockett to European fans were stars of the new 'Miami Vice' film, Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell.
    The cast of the new 'Miami Vice' film, who were haunted by storms and hurricanes on location in Miami and the Caribbean, brought the rain with them as they descended on the blue carpet in London's Leicester Square.
    Director Michael Mann's fresh take on 'Miami Vice' promises a reality-based movie with the sort of raw grit and steamy sex that never would have played on the hit 1980s television show of the same name he helped create.
    And with 'Miami Vice' back, so too are its police detectives Ricardo Tubbs and Sonny Crockett, but gone are the easygoing manners of their former actors Philip Michael Thomas (Tubbs) and Don Johnson (Crockett).
    In their place come tight-lipped, undercover tough guys Jamie Foxx (Tubbs) and Colin Farrell (Crockett).
    These two new partners rarely crack wise because they are too focused on catching bad guys and bedding good girls.
    "Well, you know, it's not really a return. It's taking away Miami Vice 'was' and told stories, which was cutting edge in 1984 and taking that same attitude about being cutting edge and right on the edge of what is happening and what's new and just taking that attitude and putting it into 2006. That's what we did," explained Mann.
    In a career spanning more than three decades in Hollywood, writer/producer/director Mann has made a speciality of lending his movies a sense of realism few other filmmakers can match.
    Mann, 63, got his start in the 1970s writing for cop shows like "Police Story" and "Starsky and Hutch." In 1984, he executive-produced mega-hit "Miami Vice," which became a pop culture phenomenon influencing TV, movies, music and fashion.
    He rose up the ranks of TV writers, but Mann said his goal always was to make movies, and by the 1990s he was turning out suspense-filled dramas such as "Heat," starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, and "The Insider" with Russell Crowe.
    Mann said he always pictured the script for the original "Miami Vice" as a movie, but by the time he read it, the TV networks already had stepped in.
    It was about four years ago that Foxx approached Mann about the idea of a new movie, and the writer/director finally saw the opportunity to create the film he'd always wanted.
    Hiding under a big umbrella, Foxx told Reuters he recognised the potential of the Miami Vice franchise.
    "Man, it's a dream because it's a franchise, you know, it's a real film, doing it with Michael Mann so we have got a chance to maybe do a lot of business with this, you know," he said.
    In the film Tubbs and Crockett see one of their key informants killed after an FBI sting operation goes bad. They take on identities as drug runners to ferret out the murderers and are plunged into a drug-making ring led by Montoya (Luis Tosar) and his key lieutenant, Isabella (Gong Li).
    The two are conflicted by their lives and loves, but resolute in their goal to nail Montoya. Throughout it all, as anyone would expect from a movie about Miami, there are cool cars, fast boats, faster aeroplanes and svelte bodies.
    "It was fun, I mean, I knew it was going to be tough work because the director Michael Mann is known as being the task master. It was a lot of 'boys with toys' stuff going on as well, the guns and the cars and the boats and all that kind of stuff, salsa dancing in Cuba. Yeah, it was fun, we got to see different places as well, we shot in Miami and then I got to go to the Dominican Republic for a while and Uruguay so yeah, it wasn't too tough," said Farrell.
    Farrell's Crockett falls in love with Isabella, while back home Tubbs' new "U.C." identity puts the life of his lover, fellow Miami cop, Trudy (Naomie Harris), in peril.
    Gong Li, whose career spans two decades in her native China, made her English-language debut only last year in 'Memoirs of a Geisha'. The star of films including 'Raise the Red Lantern', 'Farewell My Concubine' and '2046' said she welcomed the challenges Hollywood could offer, but was not looking to take her career there altogether.
    "It's not so much the fact of working in Hollywood, what is important to me is to have a good script and a good character," she said.
    If Gong had a hard time learning English and Spanish for her part, the film's other female lead, Naomie Harris, battled with a different challenge, working on the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' sequels in the Bahamas at the same time as filming 'Miami Vice' in Miami.
    "Well there was travelling backwards and forwards between Miami and the Bahamas so that was nice sometimes, they're both gorgeous locations. It was kind of difficult but the great thing is they're such completely different characters, one Jamaican, larger than life and the other's, you know, a girl from the Bronx who is an undercover agent. So I didn't really get confused which was good, yeah," she explained.
    With a fresh cast and a fresh look, the new Miami Vice is a far cry from the hit television series. But there had been no complaints from the original Crockett, Don Johnson, said Farrell.
    "No, I put a call in to him (Don Johnson) but he never called me back. Jamie saw him at a restaurant in Los Angeles and he said: 'Tell Colin Farrell when he's finished with my jock-strap I want it back', but he never called me," he joked.
    But it looks like Farrell may still have a chance to get Johnson's input on the character, with Mann hinting on a possible sequel to his new film.
    "You know if there's another story that I want to tell that is a part of Miami Vice then the answer is 'yeah'," the director said.
    'Miami Vice' opens in the UK on August 4, 2006.
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