#260. 'Miami Vice'
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The trio revisit Michael Mann's 2006 Miami Vice, prompted by a bizarre film-Twitter meltdown over who's "allowed" to love the movie. Sonny is effusive, calling it (alongside Heat) one of Mann's two best films, arguing it is at heart a love story about loneliness and companionship rather than a cop movie, and praising its native-digital cinematography (muddy in theaters, gorgeous on a modern 4K TV) and a murderers'-row supporting cast pulled from The Wire, Deadwood, Rome, and Six Feet Under. JVL agrees it's great but insists it's deeply flawed — the climactic shootout is nearly incomprehensible geographically — and reframes it not as a police procedural but as a le Carré-style spy film in the mold of The Honourable Schoolboy, walking through the notoriously chaotic production: Mann rewriting on the fly, doubling back to locations, and hiring Dominican gang members as set security, which led to an actual on-set shooting that spooked Jamie Foxx into refusing to leave the country and forced the ending to be reconceived. Mike, a first-time viewer, admits he was lost for most of the runtime, struggled with the mushy sound mix and John Ortiz's dialogue, missed any buddy-cop chemistry between Crockett and Tubbs, and singles out the trailer-park rescue as the one scene he could actually follow, promising to rewatch on Blu-ray. Before any of that, the opening third runs long: JVL recaps a college-baseball showcase trip to Boston for his son Flash, detailing how scarce real Division I baseball scholarships actually are (football and basketball eat up nearly all the equivalency money) and joking about Flash someday attending Georgetown; Sonny reports on buying a new Kia Telluride and geeking out over lane-assist tech and the still-distant prospects for self-driving cars; and Mike recounts hauling home a free Step2 plastic playhouse, power-washing it, discovering a wasp nest inside, and fighting planned obsolescence over a missing three-eighths-inch hinge pin. They also run through the box office, with Long Legs becoming a surprise hit for Neon and a digression on how little A24's grosses actually match its outsized buzz.
From the show notes
What will happen is ... what will happen is ... you'll watch the theatrical cut, be underwhelmed, watch the director's cut and better understand the plot mechanics, and then go back to the theatrical cut, which opens with that banger shot of the nightclub dancer going to town with the Linkin Park/Jay Z mashup in the background.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Shoot me? She dies. Shoot me. Go ahead. Fuck it, we can all go. That's cool. That's not what happens. What will happen is, what will happen is I will put a round at 2,700 feet per second into the medulla at the base of your brain and you will be dead from the neck down before your body knows it. Your finger won't even twitch. Only you get dead. So tell me, sport, do you believe that? Hey.
Mike00:00:42Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast. I am your co-host, Mike Warren. Joining me, as always, are my two co-hosts, who are fiends for mojitos, Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at subbeacon.com. Where you can get new episodes every Friday. Tell your friends, tell your family, join the conversation in the comments. Always a fun time, but you can only do it at subbeacon.com. We're going to be talking about Miami Vice, that movie from 18 years ago. Later in the show, but first. Forgotten masterpiece. Sure.
Sonny00:01:22Mike, you had a real skeptical tone in your voice there. I'm not sure I cared for it.
Mike00:01:27Frankly, I mean, it's not like this show has been watching movies that aren't current for the last four or five months. It's a good bit. I think we should keep it. It is a good bit. I like it. But first, before we get into all that, how is everyone doing JVL? You you're done. You don't you don't want to say you don't want to say anything about what's going on.
JVL00:01:48I will. I'm I was at a ultra high level. Oh, yes. Showcase baseball thing. Last weekend in Boston. And I've learned so much about all of this stuff. It's it's legitimately fascinating. One thing I will tell you boys that had never been told to me, but probably should have. Not that it makes a difference because it really didn't. It doesn't affect the way we've done this with Flash, but. There are very, very, very few. Division one baseball scholarships and people don't tend to realize this, but because baseball is not a revenue sport, even a major conference. Division one team, like if you are a Big East school or an ACC school. You might have one or even three baseball scholarships that you can offer, and those will not be full ride scholarships. Those might be like quarter tuition scholarships, maybe half. I mean, if you're really, really great. I don't know how it works at Tennessee. Like maybe if you're a Tennessee, they figure out ways around us. But one of the things the showcase people told us, which which is is apparently true, is that if your kid plays baseball. Even if he is good enough to be drafted into the professional leagues following college. He will make he will get vastly more scholarship money for his academics than he will for his baseball. And again, this is even if he is going to go on to play professionally. And that's fine for us because we flash a very smart kid and we've always put, you know, academics and school in the life of the mind first. But I was around a whole lot of parents who talked endlessly about how, you know, their little Jimmy was going to get a full ride to insert. College a here starting at like age 10 on. I feel like somebody should explain this to me to wake us parents down. Well, is it about this stuff earlier?
Sonny00:04:08So let me let me ask. So I have many questions about this. So the first is when you when you say he will get more money for academics, are these scholarships through the school? Like, is he is he going to? So if if you go to school a and they're like, all right, we'll give you a quarter ride based on your baseball. Skill and we'll give you half ride on your academics. So you only pay for a quarter of tuition. Is that based on how it works?
JVL00:04:34That that is possible, except that that will give you a quarter ride based on your baseball is almost non-existent, even at the level of division big conference division one programs, because since it's a non-revenue sport. They don't have that many scholarship slots available for baseball.
Sonny00:04:54I guess my second question, then. Is is are the academic scholarships kind of a workaround for the this is this is the the thing the answer is yes.
JVL00:05:05Okay, they are a workaround, but the thing is, you can only work around them so much. The kids have to have the scores and the GPA like the SATs and the GPAs to support them. So there are workaround in the sense that the coach will go to the financial aid office and say, I've got Bobby or Jamal. Or Jose here and I really want really want him on the team want to give him a really attractive package. Can you see what you can do for him on merit? And so sure the fixes in a little bit there. But there's only so much of it and you can't do anything. It's not like this kid has like a two five and you know 950 on his SATs.
Sonny00:05:50So it's not it's not like boys in the hood where they go and they they talk to the wide receiver and he's got like a 480 SAT and they're like, yeah, sure. You can you can come to USC. That's fine.
JVL00:06:01That is that is not how it works. So I found this fascinating and again, just information that parents of young baseball players should probably have starting out very very early. The other I guess it's not told enough. Yeah.
Sonny00:06:15Yeah, the I the secondary question here is all right. So you say baseball doesn't get a lot of scholarships because it's a revenue or it's not a revenue sport. So my under here is my base. I'm not a revenue sport. I have a basic understanding of how scholarships work. You you basically have to have an an equal number throughout the school throughout the school given to male and female athletes. Is that right? And so because football eats up 40 scholarships a year, 30 scholarship, whatever, whatever number of scholarships, that means the rest of the men's teams. I mean, I guess football and basketball eat up the most. And those are the revenue sports. And then I guess women's basketball probably balances out men's basketball. A little bit. But because of football, football is such a enormous suck that, like, basically all the other men's sports get screwed. Yes. Is that basically it? So. Yes. So little little Allison can go get her full ride for field hockey to balance out, you know, the guy who actually matters on the wide receiver, the wide receiver core of your football team.
JVL00:07:18Yes. But basically all I mean, this isn't just women's sports. The entire scholarship thing is supported by football and basketball. Correct. Right. Like football and basketball.
Mike00:07:27And this is the equivalency scholarship equivalence. Right, right, right.
JVL00:07:31Oh, totally. Totally. If it was up to the schools, they wouldn't give any scholarships to the crew team, the baseball team, the lacrosse team, like none of those things bring in any money, any meaningful money.
Mike00:07:44Yeah. I mean, this is a question I've often had about so I would I went to Vanderbilt, which is, you know, an elite college baseball program. Yeah. And it is all. Also, a highly competitive on the academic side of things and extremely it's a it's a private school. I know Sonny Sonny doesn't think it's competitive.
Sonny00:08:07No, I mean, it's it's I'm sure that I'm sure it's very hard.
Mike00:08:10It's it's it's I could not get in to Vanderbilt today, but maybe that's not saying much. But it's also it's also the only private school in the SEC. So, like, everything about it going there is expensive. I didn't realize that. Oh, yeah. That's right. It is. You know, I never clocked that, Michael. Yep. It's wasn't always the case. You know, some of the founding members believe Sewanee, the University of the South and Tulane. But but now it's just Vandy. And and so this raises a whole bunch of questions about, like, if you are a good baseball player who, you know, and Tim Corbin, the head coach of Vanderbilt, wants you. Like, how do you how do you recruit players who can't pay their own way? And I think that is a challenge. I haven't done the research on it, but it's always been like a question for me with given this kind of equivalency, you know, scholarship system. You need big endowments, big endowments, which allow you to give merit scholarships, which I think is one more one more thing.
JVL00:09:11So Flash was utterly dominant at at this thing. He was just he was something else struck out the first three batters he faced on, like, 12 pitches, I think, just blowing. Guys away. And afterwards, I was talking with some some people who who do this stuff up there who were projecting him out. And I think he's a mid mid to low D1 prospect. He projected he'll go somewhere in, like, the middle of the D1 baseball universe to the lower side. And so places like Villanova, Big East schools, maybe Big Ten schools, maybe Rutgers. And in this one guy says to me. You know, he might really, really be a good fit at Georgetown. Do you have any problems with him going to Georgetown? I just sat there and, you know, dug my fingernails into my hand and said, oh, my son going to Georgetown. I think that would be great. And then afterwards, perhaps he could go to medical school once he is finished playing professional baseball. I think that would be fantastic.
Sonny00:10:20Just imagine all the Georgetown gear you could buy. T-shirts. Finally. They let me in. Yeah. The pennants and the such.
Mike00:10:29I love it. I love it. That's all. That's all I've got.
Sonny00:10:31It'd be a good story, though. It'd be a good story, though. You go to the baseball, you know, I don't know. I assume they have banquets or whatever for the team, you know, tell that story over and over again.
JVL00:10:41They wouldn't let me in.
Sonny00:10:42Well, no.
JVL00:10:43I'd go to the banquet and then they'd be like, oh, I'm so sorry.
Sonny00:10:45You could be in the overflow room.
JVL00:10:46No parents. You could be watching a video monitor.
Mike00:10:49We looked up your records and we saw that you applied to Georgetown, even though you're a parent. We just.
Sonny00:10:56We're going to let you stay over at American University.
Mike00:11:00Anyway, how are you boys? Sonny, what's going on?
Sonny00:11:04Not a whole lot on my end. I. I really have nothing. I've got nothing. I've got nothing good for this week. I don't I don't have any great dudes chatting stuff. I do. Do we car talk? Does anybody want to do any car talk? So I had to get a new car. I don't know about this. So I. But the. And like shopping for a new car is whatever. I don't really want to go into that whole process. But the fascinating thing, it was we all the cars we were looking at had. It's very interesting. I like going shopping for cars because I only really go every 10 years and every 10 years there's like a quantum leap and technological advancements. So like the the like standard now on all the cars that we were testing is this lane like lanes to lane control technology. And like one of the cars. I traded and had a version of this where it would like beep a little bit if you got out of your lane. But now it like will it will like nudge you.
Mike00:12:03It will nudge the steering wheel like five back into the lane. Yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:12:06And like it's and so it was really interesting. And like I tested this on like five different models and the and what I started doing after the first one was seeing how aggressive they got. Like how like how far out of the lane I could get before it would throw me back in, which was interesting. But it's also just like it's like it's wild. I really think we are much closer to self-driving cars than than this. The real skeptics and I have been a real skeptic about this. Like I don't there are lots of things that they still don't do well. But I do think that like when we get to self-driving cars, it will be like 30 years in the future. And it will be because of a series of micro things like this over the years that have finally like gotten us basically to the point.
Mike00:12:50Sonny, Sonny, 30 years in the future. I got a text from my friend in San Francisco this morning. That he took his first Waymo self-driving, basically the self-driving Uber. Yeah. And and his his assessment of it is so far objectively better than Uber in almost every way until it hits something.
Sonny00:13:10So I mean, that's the thing is that like I do. I still think that we are is now there. There are enough. There are enough problems with it that I still think we're kind of a ways away from having like full on like minority report style, you know. The self-drive. But but it is. But anyway, it's this is this is this has been a fascinating again. It's like every 10 years I get a new car or, you know, or get like a slightly used new new car. And it's like, oh, wow. Things really have gotten much. So what did you get? It's it's I got a I got a Kia Telluride. The big.
JVL00:13:48Oh, those are great. Like it's people love the Telluride.
Sonny00:13:51I like it a lot. It's very nice. It drives pretty well. It's. Enormous. It is enormous. It's like we can we we you know, we're driving kids around the neighborhood, you know, going to camps and stuff. And, you know, we are we are finally able to do like the full full carpooling situation because we can fit you feel like five kids.
JVL00:14:14I believe that in your settings menu, you can dial in the aggressiveness of the lane assist.
Sonny00:14:19Yeah. Yeah. No, there are definitely there are there are ways you can you can tweak it. And, you know, it's it's.
Mike00:14:24But yeah, it's just it's a. Just don't park it in a rough neighborhood, you know.
Sonny00:14:29Well, no, that's. No, yeah, that was Hyundai. I don't think it was the same company.
Mike00:14:33Yeah, I think he is as well, because it's the same same guts inside.
Sonny00:14:37I don't I don't think you're talking about like the ease to steal. Right. Correct. Yeah.
JVL00:14:42It was a specific thing. Yeah. Like for a Hyundai model. Yeah.
Sonny00:14:46No, it's it's it's not this though, though, like as we were shopping, though, there were there were the stories about the tellurides bursting into flames, the parked tellurides just. Igniting into fire. So we were like, what's the deal with this? They're like, it was like 20 models. It was like 20, 20, 20 VIN numbers. You know, we were we made sure that yours won't do that. But like, well, all right. I kind of could use a new house anyway.
JVL00:15:11So I have two Kia products and they have been the two most bulletproof vehicles I've ever owned.
Sonny00:15:21I'm that's what I'm looking for, because I didn't talk about this on the show, but my I. I talked to you guys offline about this, how my last car kind of blew up on me and like the the big selling point for us was a 10 year warranty on on, you know, so I was like like I was like, all right, 10 year powertrain warranty. That's what I could use.
JVL00:15:40My two Kia's have a hundred thousand and a hundred fifty hundred forty thousand miles on them, and neither has. No, that's not true. The hundred forty thousand mile one, I just had to do my first piece of maintenance. It wasn't routine.
Sonny00:15:57What was it?
JVL00:15:59It was like a leak in some hoses or something. Yeah. Yeah. But nothing else aside from that's what I want. Routine maintenance. That's all I want.
Mike00:16:07That's incredibly well engineered and well, well executed cars. I mean, I think that's the case with a lot of the Japanese brands, right? I think they're Korean. They're Korean. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry.
Sonny00:16:19It's not all the same. Japan. It's not all the same. China. You're like, ah, it's from the east.
JVL00:16:24No, you do not want to be something. But Toyota. Nissan was just given up as a company. Totally. Toyota. Toyota. Yes. Certain models more so than others. Right.
Mike00:16:33And Honda. I think their motors are are considered superior.
JVL00:16:37But Honda engines. Yes.
Sonny00:16:39We have other problems, but they're and we were also looking at Mazdas and like I just like wasn't I didn't love the car anyway. So it did. But like I was I was also like I for some reason in the back of my head, I always have like Mazda. I don't think that's I don't think it's trustworthy.
Mike00:16:54Here's here's why you can't trust. Mazda. They change their logo like every five years. What's what's that about?
Sonny00:17:01I think it kind of does that, too, because I see a lot of different a lot of different
JVL00:17:06Kia just changed their badge like two years ago to this to the very futuristic. Yeah.
Sonny00:17:12I like that. I would not have gotten the like round circle Kia that that's, you know, you my bad.
JVL00:17:19One very important.
Sonny00:17:20Number one thing my children were interested in number of cup holders. Me. I was like, I need I need. I need the slanted lettering. I can't have the can't have that that oval thing. No, thank you.
Mike00:17:31All right. Well, I will just share that. I feel I feel like after shed talk from a couple of weeks ago that I'm just going to deliver a minor league version of that. But over this past this past weekend. You know, when I don't know if you guys experience this, but when when my wife finds something for the kids for free somewhere like that's like, you know, on Facebook or one of these groups, it's like, you know, it's like, OK, like how like how can we make this free thing fit into our lives? Do we actually need the free thing? Probably not. But but she'll find a way to justify it. So a couple of weeks ago, before we went on our two week trip, I found out there is a free like step to play house to be picked up for free and brought back to our house for our toddler to be the molded plastic. Correct.
JVL00:18:40Like it's like a cottage.
Mike00:18:42Yes, it is. It is a cottage. And lo and behold, it's from one of one of my oldest son's friends. It's it's it's in their backyard. So we get back from. Our two week trip out of town and we really need to go pick this thing up. And can you go do this in the weekend? So the warning here is that anytime something is free like this, it's never actually free. Like there's going to be some blood, sweat and tears going into this. So I drove over there with the minivan, with all of the seats down and start to take. So go to the backyard, the friends, the people who. In the house are gone, they're out of town. So it's just me back there and start to take this apart. And they're actually pretty easy to take apart. There's like basically 12 screws that hold the, the roof on. And then there's, and the sides are like tongue and groove. They slide with like a hinge pin in there. Um, so I start taking it apart. Um, it's fine. One of the four corner hinge pins is missing. It's like a steel rod. It's like three quarter or sorry, it's like three, eight. Inches, uh, a diameter and like five and a half inches long. You basically full of water. No, it was all fine. It was all fine. It was, everything was, it got, you know, a little, you know, it's been sitting out in this backyard in Northern Virginia for eight years. So, um, it, it, it was a little worse for the wear, but, uh, it was fine. And then I flip up, it's got like one of these like tables that like flips up to provide a table and the little kitchen area in this thing, and there's a giant paper wasp nest, uh, under there. So then I had to go back, get my wasps, wasps spray and spray that. Um, and they all died. Yeah, there were, there were like 10 or 15 wasps, like, um, hanging out around there. But interestingly, they were all extremely lethargic, like nobody, like, like they weren't like buzzing around and like flying or like they were just kind of all crawling on this thing, maybe because of the heat, I don't know. Um, uh, but got, you know, got that taken care of, took it all apart. Um, and of course, like the two big side pieces don't fit in my van. Um, of course not like they're way too wide and way too tall. So there's no way to finagle it. So I get everything else in the, in the, in the van, take it back. Uh, my neighbor who has a truck. Co's back with me to get the last two pieces. Um, and then, uh, and then that's where really where the fun begins because then it's cleaning every single. Piece with the power washer, which is a lot of fun. I have to say the power washer, you guys, you guys power wash.
JVL00:21:34Never.
Mike00:21:35What a rush. What a rush you're missing. You're missing out. Uh, and, uh, clean it up, basically spent all day outside trying to put this thing together and, um, uh, and, uh, and then, and then actually pieced it together and the toddler loves it. It's, it's fantastic. He's, he's so happy with it. He has. Uh, you know, this little thing, we put it like on the side of our carport. It's like, it, you know, it's like kind of surrounded by trees. It's very nice, but I want to return back to this hinge pin thing because the, the structure will stand up without the fourth hinge pin. It's got three, it's got the screws on the, on the roof. Like it will stand up. It was standing up without it. Um, but I had to email step two to like, say like, Hey, do you guys have any, any more hinge pins like this? Like I have this model. Um, obviously this is an old model, but maybe you still have like these steel things. And the response was basically that's out of, that's out of stock. So we don't have anything for it, which I find a little, a little confusing. Like, like they're not still making, I mean, I, you can buy ones that look a lot like this one. Do they not use the hinge pin anyway? So that's, that's what I'm on.
Sonny00:22:50That's, that's planned. Obsolescence is what that is. You want to buy, you want to buy a part for a thing that we don't actually
JVL00:22:55find some long piece of metal, but it's the same size.
Mike00:23:00I have looked, I have looked all over the internet. I've looked all over homedepot.com to like find like a specific diameter. It's an odd diameter. I mean, this is the planned obsolescence thing, right? It's like, it's like it's three eighths of an inch. And so like if it's too thick or too thin, then what's the, you know, then, then it doesn't work.
JVL00:23:18You can get it too thick because it's going through molded plastic. So you can go in there with an all drill and you can, make that hole wide enough to fit it. That'd be my advice. That's what I'll do.
Mike00:23:30All right. Anyway, that's, what's going on in my neck of the woods. Uh, shall we talk?
JVL00:23:35I would just like to say that in passing, yes, the step two cottage house that we had was among the most played with in beloved toys of my kids, small childhoods, the, the, the ROI on the step two playhouse through the roof. Well, good. Possibly one of the highest ROIs of anything other than the plastic rings. Oh, plastic rings that you put on top of the, that thing in terms of like our, I think of the, I think of the, the, what would this be? Not what would the war be? The, the, the value over replacement, the wart, the, the value over replacement toy where you are, you are plotting the cost of the toy versus the number of hours. The toy amuses your child. Over, over the years, I would say that vort for the step two playhouse, very high. Excellent.
Mike00:24:33Well, this is good, but we never had one for the, for the other kids. And so, uh, I guess we were just denying that, but like, it's also the kind of thing that like us, like just, just in terms of what we, like, we would never buy one and, and so we had to wait until it was free 99 and, and, and here we go. So, uh, I guess the labor of love, so, um, all right, well, let's move on and talk about the box office. Number one, once again, despicable me for. At the box office, uh, followed by number two, long legs is what is this? Is this, uh, so long legs?
Sonny00:25:08Yeah. Long legs, horror movie starring Nick cage and Micah Monroe. Who's the, uh, folks, folks will remember her from the movie. It follows. If you saw that movie, she was the final girl in that. Um, uh, but the, uh, but long legs is actually kind of interesting. So long legs. Is, uh, it's distributed by neon, which is like, it's kind of like, it's like a 24 in terms of Indy, cool. Um, they, they won an Oscar for, uh, parasite a couple of years back. Um, so it's like, it's, it's, uh, it's like one of the, it's like the mid level Indy brand, you know, uh, that, that has done pretty well for itself, um, aside from a 24, uh, but like this, this is an enormous hit just out of just first weekend. Gross of $22 million is an enormous hit. It's going to, you know, it'll end up probably grossing somewhere between 60 and 70 though, you know, smile, which came out a couple of years ago, uh, open to the same number, I think are pretty close to that. Some, somewhere in that range and then ended up grossing nearly a hundred million. So, you know, if it has legs, I don't think this will have legs. Cause I think it's, it's, I don't think it's quite as good. I think it's a little bit weirder.
Mike00:26:19Um, but the, but it won't have long legs if you will.
Sonny00:26:25Uh, I've made, I've made all the long legs jokes.
JVL00:26:29This kid at word play, Michael, well done. I should write for McSweeney's.
Sonny00:26:35Uh, but the, uh, but the, uh, but it's, it's a big hit. It's a big hit. And it's a big win for, uh, again, for like the indie horror scene. There'd been some talk recently. A bunch of horror movies had kind of underperformed, hadn't done as well as people had hoped. Um, but like, this is a, it's so funny. I, I talk about this all the time and nobody is that interested in it, but I'm interested in it. So I'm gonna talk about it again. A24 is the most fascinating distributor for me because they vastly outpunch their actual, uh, impact and weight. You know, the A24, A24 releases a movie and that movie is going to gross maybe 5 million or maybe, you know, if it's, if it does pretty well, it's going to do 15 to 20. Um, their, their highest grossing film is everything everywhere all at once, which did, I think 80 something domestically civil war did 70 something domestically, but like they don't have huge, enormous hits. And like the perfect example of this is right now they have a movie out, uh, called Maxine, Maxine, a horror film, low budget. Um, it's the third in a series. It's the third in a series. So Maxine is a sequel to X, which, uh, was, uh, they had a prequel called Pearl. So X, Pearl. Maxine all in a series, those movies combined, I think have grossed something like $30 million, $30 million. And this movie is going to end up grossing more than all three of them put together. Probably almost certainly, uh, unless something really weird happens, but this, this movie will end up grossing more than, than all three of those domestically. And it just like it again, a 24 is a very weird studio because they have so much buzz. They're so buzz. Everybody loves their stuff. They're like the cool hip brand as, as, as long, as far as you can make like cool hip distributors in the film business. Right. They're like what Miramax was, uh, in the, in the early nineties. Like if you watch movies, you know, what a 24 is.
JVL00:28:40They're like what HBO was in TV in 2005. Kind of. Nobody watched HBO shows, but it was all anybody ever talked about.
Sonny00:28:49Right. Similar, similar to that. And like, and, and that's, and, and the thing is I like a 24. A 24 is an interesting distributor. They pick up a lot of movies. I like, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to slag them too much, but like their movies gross as much as your average, they, their movies gross far less on average than the average crunchy roll anime film that gets put in a, in a movie theater for two weekends. You know, like it's, it's the, the amount of actual overall impact that they have is, is miniscule, miniscule, minis, minuscule, minuscule.
Mike00:29:22You have, you're right there, Sonny.
Sonny00:29:25Minisculule compared to, uh, compared to, you know, the, the, the actual buzz they get. So anyway, long legs, huge hit for Neon.
Mike00:29:32Alicia Witt is in long legs. I see.
Sonny00:29:35Alicia Witt. She's great. She's great in long legs. Like Alicia Witt. Like that Alicia Witt.
Mike00:29:40Who doesn't?
Sonny00:29:42I don't know.
Mike00:29:43Uh, okay. Uh, and, uh, any other box office thoughts? Um, despicable me for demonstrating that the children are, are the future of,
JVL00:29:55of movie theaters. Will that play long enough that I can wait to take G money out to see it?
Sonny00:30:01Yeah. I mean, I, I don't think anything.
JVL00:30:03I don't have to go in the next two weeks. It's going to be there also.
Sonny00:30:05I took my boys already, but I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's holding really well. I mean, it's only down 41% second weekend. It'll be, it'll be, it'll be, it'll, it will be in theaters for like another two months. I'll put it.
JVL00:30:17Can I take him to see twisters? Is that safe for a seven year old?
Sonny00:30:22How good is he with storm? How good is he with seeing people get sucked up into a tornado?
JVL00:30:32Well, he's probably, I mean, like we had those bad thunderstorms that came through the East coast last night. He was sleeping in our bed. Yeah.
Sonny00:30:40Did he, did he, did he care? Does he, is he worried about, uh, storms?
JVL00:30:44Well, he's, he's worried about everything. He hasn't really thought about storms yet. So maybe I don't want to put tornado in, into his, uh, I mean, look, I don't think
Sonny00:30:55he's worried about tornadoes too much in New Jersey.
JVL00:30:57It doesn't matter. I mean, he's a little kid. He'll worry about whatever we put in front of his brain.
Mike00:31:01I was about his age when Twister came out and it, I had an irrational fear of tornadoes for like the next, for like 15 years of my life. Like it was like, I was horrified. So, but his mileage may vary.
Sonny00:31:18I think being afraid of tornadoes is a fairly rational fear. I think that's an okay one to have. Yeah. But like if it thunders.
Mike00:31:25I figured I thought there was going to be a tornado.
Sonny00:31:26In New Jersey, you're probably like, it's, it's interesting because my, my kids are now like very, very like anytime there's a thunderstorm and the tornado siren goes off, they're like, we got to get in the, we got to get in the room. We got to, we got to hunker down.
JVL00:31:41Do you have a tornado shelter?
Sonny00:31:42No, we have, I mean, we have like an interior, we have this room that I'm in right now. My office is where we go when there's a tornado. Cause it's like an interior room without windows or, or anything.
Mike00:31:51So you can still podcast while the tornado was happening. Well, this happened.
Sonny00:31:55And I remember the first podcast we did from, from Dallas. Like I'm sitting here.
JVL00:32:00Mike was not here. I was not here. Yeah.
Sonny00:32:02I was, I'm sitting here doing the podcast and I like hear a, I heard like a police siren off in the distance. I was like, I wish that cop car would go away. And, and Beth comes running in and she's like, that's the tornado siren. I'm like, what?
JVL00:32:14What's happening?
Mike00:32:16I would love to see, like, I would not love to see this, but the idea of like your house being taken away, but like your one interior podcast room, like, you know, stay. Like staying on the ground with you and the, uh, with your microphone and all that would be very good.
Sonny00:32:29Just, just, just, uh, podcast through it. Podcast through it.
Mike00:32:32That's got a, that's a scene in twisters. It has to be a scene in twisters. Um, all right.
Sonny00:32:36So there, there is a scene in a movie theater though. There wasn't in any of the trailers for some reason, which is the dumbest, dumbest marketing decision I've ever seen.
Mike00:32:45Uh, okay. Well, we will, uh, maybe we'll watch twisters one of these days, but that is not.
Sonny00:32:50I think JBL is very excited for twisters. Weren't you, weren't you talking about how excited you were?
JVL00:32:54I'm so excited. And I'm worried that you're going to tell me like, eh, it's mid.
Sonny00:32:57It's pretty good. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. It's good.
Mike00:33:00The Glenn Powell takeover of Hollywood to continue. But there was no, there was no, there's nothing to Renaissance about.
Sonny00:33:10Like he's just, he's been in the business for a long time. He was in like spy kids three. He was in the dark night rises. Yeah.
JVL00:33:17No, he's one of these guys who has just been hanging around the industry waiting for his break. And then, uh, they, they gave it to him.
Sonny00:33:25He's hanging with Maverick in the dark night rises. He's the, remember when they take the stock exchange and he's like the snotty guy, he's the snotty young guy in like the suit cross bro.
JVL00:33:35Yeah. They don't have any money, right? What is he? He's like, yeah, there's nothing for you to steal.
Sonny00:33:41And then Bane says, well then why are you here?
Mike00:33:46Remember when we saw that at the, uh, at the, uh, uh, uh, air and space museum. That was fantastic. Oh, that was great. All right. Uh, let's move on though, because we are not talking about twisters. We're not talking about, uh, despicable me and the minions. We're talking about Miami vice, baby. Uh, Sonny, you want to give us a little intro about why we're talking about Miami vice?
JVL00:34:08Thank you. Because I need, I still don't understand. I don't quite understand it either. And I'm so glad we did. I'm super glad we did, but I don't understand the impetus for it.
Sonny00:34:16Here's, here's the thing. It's, it's too hard. I send you guys the link to the decider story, but like the long and the short of it, the Uh, a guy on Twitter who I know who I've interviewed for Bulwark as a Hollywood nice guy, very into action movies said he, his girlfriend asked to be introduced to his, she was like, we should watch your favorite movie. And he was like, okay. And showed her Miami vice. And then some, some real awful person on Twitter was like, look at this straight white bro doing his straight white bro things. And then everybody on film Twitter was like, screw you lady. You're Miami vices for everyone, not just for the straight whites. But I was glad to get, uh, Miami vice in the race draft. I was glad that we, the straight white guys got it. We, that, that's a big win for us getting Michael Mann, like we, we, we get, we take a lot of, we take a lot of grief, but we got that one and I'll, I'll, I'll take it anyway. So it turned into this whole thing. It turned into this multi-day meltdown and like the woman behind it is this terrible person who, uh, it doesn't matter. She just is. Like did the, she had a whole Atlantic piece written about how terrible she was at the Guggenheim. Uh, like it was just like, anyway, neither here nor there. But the point is everybody was appreciating Miami vice. They did, they did screenings in New York city and Los Angeles. Uh, they, they, everyone was appreciating this movie and that's nice to see, uh, because when it came out, it got, it was kind of dismissed. Uh, it was not, it was not much loved, um, but has grown in esteem over the years. Uh, and I, and I'm. Um, uh, that's why, that's why we're, we're talking about it today.
?00:35:59Okay.
Sonny00:36:00So there was internet, there was internet bullshit, drama, and that's why we're talking
Mike00:36:04about it today. I will say, and you said this over text or maybe on Twitter or something, but like when, when you actually explain out loud a Twitter controversy, it always sounds even dumber than it is.
Sonny00:36:18It's a, it's, it's an, it's like, there's no way to go through life. The fact that the honestly. Like someone will write a history of late stage American decline in like a hundred years and they will pinpoint Twitter as like the thing that killed America. I, that's the thing I have no, but then the, the guy will try to explain why. And he'll sound like a kook. He'll be like, nobody actually could have cared about any of these things. Nobody could have cared about it. Why would an account called libs of Tik Tok be on Twitter? And like, that's a Tik Tok thing. Right. And then you'll have to be like, well, no, you see the, and, and like, it's, it's, it's just where we're on. We're all doomed and we're doomed for the dumbest possible reason. Social media.
Mike00:36:59Well, we might as well watch Miami vice while, uh, while everything is going to take any
Sonny00:37:04excuse to rewatch.
Mike00:37:05So do we need a, uh, a quick, uh, review of my old enough that there will be people listening
JVL00:37:11to this who actually have never seen it.
Sonny00:37:13All right. So Miami vice, Miami vice directed by Michael Mann, uh, 2006, uh, kind of a flop when it came out. Uh, it stars Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx. Talking over, um, the Crockett and Tubbs roles, uh, from the TV show, uh, what you have to understand about Miami vice is that it's a movie you have to see twice to like really understand the actual plot mechanics of what is going on because the base, the basic plot is very simple. Uh, Crockett and Tubbs or vice cops. One of their sources gets blown by the FBI and the FBI then has to figure out where this leak is coming from. The first part of the movie is about finding that leak is about finding which is the, where the OPSEC has failed and to do this, they never do they know they do. They do. They do.
Mike00:38:06They there's, it's very briefly handled figure out isn't it like DEA or CIA or something?
Sonny00:38:11No, it's, it's Washington, DC, FBI section, but that's all it, all they do is identify
JVL00:38:16a section.
Sonny00:38:17Well, right, right. They, they figure out where the, but, but beyond that though, the, the once Crockett and Tubbs go undercover and get insinuated into this. Business, they realize that they have like worked their way into the biggest crime syndicate in the world, you know, global bringing in heroin from Afghanistan and, you know, uh, illegal, uh, uh, unprotected software from China. Like it's a, it's a massive, there's a massive, uh, criminal conspiracy here that they've worked their way inside of, um, and, uh, that is what the kind of second part of the movie is trying to figure out how far to take this, how far to take this, uh, this. Thing, but the movie is actually about, the movie is not actually about any of these things. The movie is actually about, uh, Colin Farrell's character, Sonny, uh, finding love. It's a, it's a love story. This movie is a, this movie is about love and relationships. And this is why it's interesting because heat and Miami vice are Michael Mann's two best movies. And they're also the movies that are most interested in this idea of companionship and finding someone to be with and the emptiness. And your life, if you don't have that, um, the, the, the whole, the whole middle part of the movie. And this is one of the reasons why it didn't play well, I think with audiences the first time around, but the whole middle part of the movie involves, uh, uh, Colin Farrell and, uh, Gong. Is it Gong Lee? Is that who the actress is? Yes. Gong Lee, uh, who is a Chinese Cuban drug runner. For, uh, uh, like an, a Colombian paramilitary squad. Hell yeah. The, the, the, uh, anyway, the international nature of this is also very interesting and something that will play into Heat 2 if that ever comes out. Uh, I don't know if you guys read the book Heat 2. Did you guys read Heat 2? No.
JVL00:40:11You know, I, I passed on it. Should I? It's, it's not, it's not great.
Sonny00:40:15It's not great, but it's also kind of interesting. They're going to make Heat 2 the movie. Austin Butler is going to be the Val Kilmer character who gets away from it. Uh, anyway, long story short, long story short. Uh, this is a movie about love. It's a love story. It's a, it's a, it's a, it is a movie about love and relationships and what you will do to protect the person in your life, how far you will go to find that relationship, what you will risk, what you will give up. Uh, and, and that's why it's kind of interesting. Again, I, I think that you, you could credibly make the case for like six or seven Michael Mann movies that they're the best Michael Mann movie. But I think the two that are his best are Heat and Miami Vice. And they are the best because they are both dealing with this question of loneliness and companionship. Uh, anyway, um, I, I love this movie. It's one of the rare movies that is going to look better on your TV at home than it will in the theaters for a very specific reason. So Michael Mann shot this movie with digital, um, all digital cameras. He was one of the first big name directors to really like get on the digital train and, and he shot this and Public Enemy. In, um, in, uh, in, in digital. And there was a lot of talk at the time when these movies came out about how bad they looked, but they looked bad for a very specific reason, which is that they were shot in digital and then they were put through. Remember, this is back when film projectors were still the norm. Both of these movies came out when film projectors, not digital projectors were the norm. So he shoots in digital. They have to reconfigure it for film. Then they have to make prints and it, it creates all of this. Digital noise, film noise, analog noise. It like the movies did not look good in theaters. You watch them at home on your 4k TV. Um, they're in their native format. They look much better. The, the, the, the, the shootout in Miami vice, um, looks so good. It is shot with natural lights. Like it is not, it is not lit. They used, I mean, it is lit, but like they use very low levels of light. Um, and they were able to do that because they're using these, you know, fancy at the time, digital. Digital cameras that were able to capture low level light sources. My favorite.
JVL00:42:28It's awfully confusing though.
Sonny00:42:30The shootout at the end. Yeah. Yes. The shootout at the, well, this movie also had interesting production problems.
JVL00:42:37We're going to talk about that.
Sonny00:42:38Okay. You want to talk about that? I'll, I'll wait, I'll wait for you to talk about that. But they, they basically had to rewrite the entire ending because Jamie Foxx refused to leave the country, uh, to finish, finish the film as it was originally scripted. But, uh, JBL, you can, you can discuss that. Anyway, I love this movie. I think it's great. I'm glad we, we got a chance to sit down and watch. And, and talk about it. Uh, and I, the other thing I really love about this movie, uh, Miami Vice is that it has, it has a cast that was clearly assembled by somebody who spent their time watching nothing but HBO dramas from the early aughts. Like there are characters from, uh, there are act, there are character actors from The Wire, from Deadwood, from Rome, from Six Feet Under. Um, I, like there are, it's, it's like, it's like just a murderer's row of guys who, uh, you saw for like. Three episodes or actually were like major, major characters. I mean, like the, the Russian guy.
JVL00:43:29Barry Shabaka Henley.
Sonny00:43:30What's that?
JVL00:43:31Barry Shabaka Henley. Who's fantastic.
Sonny00:43:34Who's that? Which one is that? Uh, he's the lieutenant, the police lieutenant. Oh, the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JVL00:43:37Who everybody will remember from, uh, uh, the, the pre collateral because he's the jazz, the jazz guy who gets shot in the head.
Sonny00:43:48Yeah.
JVL00:43:48Yeah.
Mike00:43:49Dominic Lombardozzi. Dominic Lombardozzi. Right. Wasn't he Herc? Dominic Lombardozzi. He was Herc. He was Herc. Yeah, that's why I, yeah, I kept calling him Herc on our, uh, yeah.
Sonny00:43:57And, uh, the, the Russian guy at the beginning was the Russian guy from the second and third season of Deadwood. Yeah. Uh, Kieran Hines. Kieran Hines is fantastic. Who played Julius Caesar.
JVL00:44:05Luis Tosar, who plays the, the head boss.
Mike00:44:08That guy's fantastic in this.
Sonny00:44:09Yeah.
Mike00:44:10He's got big, big bushy eyebrows.
Sonny00:44:12He's got, he's got like scary eyes. He has like, he has the eyes that you see in a guy and you're like, oh no, that, that guy will kill you. That guy will, that guy will kill you as soon as, as soon as look at you. Um, anyway, love this movie. Uh, great cast. Uh, it's, it is, it holds up very well. And I think it's, uh, it's got a great score too. The score is so good. Despite, uh, Michael Mann's over-reliance on Chris Cornell in his post Soundgarden band, the rest of it is very, very good.
Mike00:44:40Was it Audioslave that he was, that, that, okay. It wasn't Chris Cornell.
Sonny00:44:45There are several Audioslave tracks in this, in this film. Yeah. I believe. I don't, I don't think it's Chris Cornell as a solo act. I think it is Audioslave. But, uh, but no, he, he should, he should stick with it. He should stick with Moby, more Moby, less Chris Cornell.
Mike00:44:57Yeah, I think that's right. Nobody, nobody's ever said more Moby, but, um, I think.
Sonny00:45:01No, Moby, Moby, Moby is the perfect ambient music for Michael Mann movies. He also has the great, it's the great track at the end of Heat, uh, God, God moving across the face of the water or whatever. Like that, that, that's a, that's perfect. Anyway, I'm done. I'm done. You guys. That's all. Okay.
JVL00:45:18JVL. So listen, I, I love it, but it's also deeply flawed. I mean, this is not a perfect movie. There are lots of things that don't work about it. Uh, as a, for instance, the final shootout is essentially, it is incomprehensible who is who in this shootout or what the geography of it is or what's happening, uh, in ways that are not true. Previous action sequences in the movie, previous action sequences, when there's a break into the mobile home to the trailer, the first shootout where the Russians are killed, those are all very, very intelligible. Um, I want to talk about the production, but first I want to say something that this is not actually, it's Miami vice in name only the show itself. Uh, people forget this. The show itself for the first two years was kind of playful. It was only on for five seasons. Uh, it was playful. There were comic relief characters in it and then Dick Wolf took it over and he turned it into sort of a rip from the headlines story of the week stuff. And it became much more serious and much darker, even to the, the people, people have written dissertations about this. The color palettes changed from, from pastels in the first two seasons to earth tones. And then to finally to like harsh neons in the season five. Um, but this isn't really Miami vice in, it's not a police procedural. This is a spy movie, right? And it's, it's about intelligence work and counterintelligence work and not just a spy movie, it is very specifically a look hurry style spy movie in which both sides are compromised. Uh, the, the objectives are illusory, right? It begins as a mole hunt. The, the, the, the technique they employ to find the mole is what in, in trade craft is referred to as barium meals where they're giving out different information, slightly different versions of the information to the different agencies, which is how they find which agencies. He has the leak and, and the, the romance winds up being star cross. We can't really sure, be sure if the two lovers are playing one another or if only one of them is playing the other and everything winds up unresolved and unsatisfying. The movie, this reminds me the movie, the story, this reminds me most of is the honorable school boy. Like that's, that's what Miami vice feels like to me for all of the good things and the bad things about it. And I. I think once you, once you view it, not as a cops thing, but as this is Michael Mann's look, hooray movie, then it makes more sense. So this is a famously troubled production. Michael Mann was, I mean, there were stories being written about what a disaster this was as it was happening, right? Mann was writing and rewriting the script on the fly as he was going. He. Was so disorganized. This blew my mind. They, they shot it on location, both in Florida and then in Uruguay, the Dominican Republic and Paraguay, I think he was so disorganized that he like left Uruguay, went down to Uruguay, shot left, moved on to the next location and then had to go back to Uruguay and shoot some more. Not good. Which I mean, when you, the amount of money you're setting on fire, when you have to go back to another country. To shoot, you're supposed to, when you shoot in multiple locations, you shoot everything that's going to be shot in that place, in that place, and then you move on. And he was like doubling back on his tracks. And famously what happened was, uh, he was so, so interested in verisimilitude that he wanted to shoot in neighborhoods that were so dangerous in the Dominican Republic that even Dominican police don't go there. And so what he did was he hired local gangsters. Gang members as his set security. And all of this culminated in, uh, a shooting on set.
Sonny00:49:31Like an actual shooting. An actual shooting.
JVL00:49:34An actual shooting.
Mike00:49:34They were shooting a movie and there was a shooting.
JVL00:49:36And it was between somebody trying to get onto the set because he wanted to like get autographs or something. And one of the paid security people. And when this happened, Jamie Foxx said, I am getting the fuck out of here. They were in the Dominican Republic at the time. He'll, he left, went back to Florida and he said, I will shoot more in the United States, but I am not leaving the country again for this fucking movie. And the final scene was supposed to be shot in Paraguay and was supposed to involve Jamie Foxx and they couldn't do it because of that. And so the entire ending had to be reconceptualized on the fly. And all of that is like, you see this messiness of the production on the screen in the way that this is. I don't want to say it feels like an unfinished movie, but it feels more unfinished than any of man's other movies. And yet I kind of like that. I like the rough draft feel of it. And I like the look of it. I like the edges that don't really work. Like I said, it's not a perfect movie. It's not heat where everything is clockwork precision.
Sonny00:50:46Well, it feels, it feels more real. I mean, that's, that's, that's what is. So you talk about the, the. The ending not being as visually coherent as other stuff in the movie and frankly, other Michael Mann work just in general. And part of that is because it, it is, it is misconceptualized on a very specific level because you have, you have a guy behind the lines of the bad guys who is shooting at them. And then because you have that, you're constantly breaking the access, right? You're, you're, you're doing your, you, you were forced to do a very specific thing that you're not supposed to do in filmmaking, which is like. Change the way the bullets are shooting from good guys to bad guys. And because you do that, it is kind of confusing. And this is one of the reasons why I say you really have to watch this movie more than once to kind of figure it out because the, the, the plot is the same way. There are so many crosses and double crosses and like just keeping track of like, wait, why are, why is the Aryan Brotherhood here again? Like we haven't, we haven't talked about the best scene in the film at all, which is the scene in the trailer park where, uh, the, the team storms the, the trailer to save something. Save the, uh, save Trudy who has been taken and you know, uh, just, just a perfect shoot. I don't mean I like the messiness of that end is what works and what makes it believable that, uh, Colin Farrell and Gong Lee kind of hightail it out of there and get going.
JVL00:52:10I, uh, I, I love Colin Farrell as an actor and this was the movie that cemented for me that he was a giant fucking movie star. Like he, he's just so good in every single scene of this and he's even good when, I mean, there are moments when the dialogue is, is tough. There's a moment where Michael Mann, like there's some moments of absolute classicness, you know, do you know what the meaning of the word foreboding is? And there, and there are moments which are, are not like are too attempting to be hard boiled, but even when it's not great, the job he does, it's just, it's great.
Mike00:52:52I love it.
JVL00:52:52Michael, please tell me you like it.
Mike00:52:55So, oh boy, I had not seen Miami Vice until this week.
?00:53:02Wow.
Mike00:53:04I don't know why I didn't see it when it came out. Like I would have been prime audience for it at my age and my, I'm going to see movies all the time, but I just didn't. When did it come? It came out in the summer of, is this a summer? Summer 2006.
Sonny00:53:23Yeah, I think it was summer 2006, June, June or July 20. Yeah.
Mike00:53:27I mean, like again, like I had, I was, I was getting ready to go to college and all of that. So I don't know. So I, I do think I need to watch it again because the whole time I felt confused about what was going on. I felt like this is kind of, I can't see what's going on a lot of the time. Like it's, it's dark and I'm like struggling to follow what's happening. I, after listening to you guys, I feel kind of like an idiot because like, I'm like, I don't know what's going on in this movie.
Sonny00:54:07No, no, no, no, no. You're, you're not wrong. Look again. So this is how I would recommend watching it. I would recommend watching the theatrical cut. That's what's on Netflix right now. Yeah, that's what I watched.
Mike00:54:15Yep.
Sonny00:54:16You should, you should buy the Blu-ray and then watch the director's cut.
Mike00:54:19Yeah, I'm probably not.
Sonny00:54:20And then go back and watch the theatrical cut again. That's how you should watch it three times. That's how all good movies should be made.
JVL00:54:24They should be made so that in order to appreciate what was shown in the theaters, you have to first watch that, then watch the director's cut and then watch the theatrical cut again. Yes. Because that's how you meet the audience where they are. You know what? You don't settle for the audience. You don't settle for the audience as they are.
Sonny00:54:37If the audience isn't, if the audience isn't willing to do the work.
JVL00:54:40They want art, they should work for it.
Sonny00:54:40The audience isn't willing to do the work. It's not worth making it for them, frankly.
Mike00:54:45Maybe, look, this has been, I feel like I've done six months of work in this one week. And we don't need to go into all that. But like, so, so maybe it's, maybe it is me. Maybe it is me. That's all. That's all I'm saying. Now it's the movie. The, I, I, it's, it's interesting that you brought up.
JVL00:55:02Did you have trouble with the dialogue, Michael?
Mike00:55:05A little bit.
Sonny00:55:07Specifically when Gong Li is talking.
Mike00:55:10No, not with her. No, no, no, no, no. Least of all. That's interesting. It was, it was. Oh, really? It was, what's his name? Cuban, the guy with the, maybe it wasn't Cuban.
Sonny00:55:20Jose Yarrow?
Mike00:55:21Yarrow, yeah. Yarrow was, was a little hard to follow.
Sonny00:55:25I love that actor, John Ortiz.
Mike00:55:27Yeah, he's, he's great.
JVL00:55:28Normally he's like a funny guy.
Sonny00:55:29Yeah.
JVL00:55:30He's great in this.
Sonny00:55:31So.
JVL00:55:32I thought, when I saw this movie, I thought for sure he was. How do I get people to talk to me you do not want to know.
Mike00:55:37See, I don't know. Like, I, I agree that the best scene from my perspective, trying to figure out what's going on, was in the trailer park. Like, to me, that was the clearest. Um, that scene had the sort of clearest beginning, middle and end, and I understood everything that was going on. And part of it feels like it's because the lights were on. I don't know. Is that, is that crazy? Like, like the lights were on in the, in the trailer. And I was like, oh, I see what's happening now. Um, I also found it weird. That Jamie Foxx that, that, that Crockett and Tubbs have like zero chemistry with each other. Like I, it was, it was, it. It was weird chemistry and brothers.
Sonny00:56:23Yeah. They, they got mutual admiration, man.
Mike00:56:26I guess I just like, there was no, there was no, like, I was expecting like a light moment or two between them. And like, if it was there, it was very, uh, subtle and I missed it. Um, so I don't know, like it's not a buddy cop comedy film film. So like, I, I'm not expecting that, but it's, you know, like a little bit of lightness, a little bit of like why they're. Why they're so close. I just, I, I didn't pick it up. So, uh, I guess I need to give it another watch. It was fine. It was fine.
Sonny00:56:59The sound mix for me was weirdest in the, um, the moment, the, the, the scene where they're at the like beach house and there's tons, there was tons of like water noise and it was all coming through the front channel. I was like, why is this stop? Stop.
JVL00:57:12So when this first came out, I remember John complained about the audio mix.
Sonny00:57:16Yeah.
JVL00:57:17And John, John Potter arts was, was said, I, yeah, it's hard to impossible to understand what people are saying. And I thought, well, maybe John had a bad, you know, just had a bad audio mix or a bad speaker set up at the theater. He saw it at this time. I had, no, I did. I did not watch this on 5.1. I watched this with headphones on. Um, but there were a couple of times when I had to go back a couple, like hit back button for 10 seconds to, to try to suss out what was being said again. And the audio mix felt a little bit mushy. To me. Uh, but of course now I am the age that John Butthorst was when he first saw this movie. So maybe it's just that old people can't understand it. I don't know.
Mike00:58:02I looked up his review as you were talking, uh, from the weekly standard and he has a great, great bit of dialogue. Jamie Foxx says, so garble, you're going to unclear. And are we going to blow our friend out? Or Colin Farrell? I want to grow for her. Unless the mumble Jamie Foxx got that right. Mother mama.
JVL00:58:21Um, I can't believe I remembered that John, this was John's complaint. That is an incredibly deep poll for me. I did not look that up.
Sonny00:58:28It was, it was one of, it's one of my favorite reviews of his. I, I, and I, I like, I kind of agreed with it even at the time because there is, so I saw it at the, uh, I saw it at the old MPAA theater, which is like, uh, which is like
JVL00:58:43a screening room.
Sonny00:58:44Yeah. The one on the one on ice, you know? Um, and it, it's a great theater. It's like a little old screening room. It's small, but it's, it's really, really well set up. And I remember hearing, having hearing issues of my own at the time at that theater. Um, so I, I, it is a sound mix issue. There's a Christopher Nolan problem here, uh, which is, which is very, very, is still prevalent. And I, like I said, I watched it, so I watched it on Netflix, uh, because that's just what I was watching it on and the front mix of the, the, you know, 2.1 surround sound, nonsense that, that they were putting out was like, uh, it was very overloaded with like background noises, which was kind of drowning out the dialogue. But I don't, that, that may just be endemic to the film itself. Yeah.
JVL00:59:33All right. I have to get out of here in a minute, but I just want to one, I want to push back in something Sonny said, Sonny, you said this is Michael Mann's second best movie. I think that's arguable. I could certainly put it in his top four, but I believe his second best movie is the insider.
Sonny00:59:50I, you could make a case. For the insider, you can make a case. The insider is so good. You can make him a case for Manhunter. Last Mohicans. You could make, I would not, but some, some people would, uh, or even, even, even Ali like Ali has flashes of filmmaking that are as good as anything Michael Mann has ever done that specifically like the first 20 minutes or so, like the, the montage he does at the beginning is some of the best stuff he's ever done. But I mean, I, I like, I, I, for me it is his second best movie, but I also understand people don't feel that way.
Mike01:00:23Yeah. All right. Well, that is all the time we are going to give to this episode. Join us over at subbeacon.com. Tell your friends and family, and we'll talk to you next time. Um, no love for, uh, uh, for Ferrari. Remember when we watched that? That was Michael Mann.
Sonny01:00:47I like Ferrari fine. I consider, I think it's minor.
Mike01:00:51Yeah.
Sonny01:00:52Minor man.
Mike01:00:53Exactly. Agree. Yeah. I'm sure it's fine.
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