Tonight I watched Michael Mann’s Unrated Director’s Edition of Miami Vice. While I love Michael Mann and his crazy Hi-Def directing, the theatrical cut of Miami Vice just didn’t do it for me. It was a beautiful film to watch, but it was also harder than hell to watch because half of the time you were playing catch up, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Things just kind of happened. Drug deals went down but you were never really sure what it all meant or why you should care. It felt choppy. One awesome gun battle at the end of the film does not an awesome movie make.

I wasn’t sure if I was even going to buy either DVD, because the movie left such a blah impression in my mind. But I heard good things about the Unrated Director’s Edition, so I decided on a whim to pick it up, and because Josh wanted to know if it was worth seeing, I popped it in the ol’ Lifestyle system. The verdict? Well, despite the fact that the film is basically the same one you saw in the theater, the minor changes in this version make all the difference in the world. The plot flows better from one scene to another, so that we can infer what is going on instead of having to just guess. The opening of the film was replaced by a speedboat race. Now, this speedboat race has really nothing to do with anything, but it is damn pretty to look at, it does effectively set the tone for the rest of the picture, and it does lead itself nicely into the next section of the film, which is where the original theatrical cut started by just throwing you into a confusing club sequence. Basically you get the gist that Crockett and Tubbs are on a stakeout, trying to bust a buyer, which isn’t really that obvious in the theatrical cut until about halfway into that scene. A lot of the changes in the film are minor ones like that, that don’t really make for a drastically different movie but do help to more effectively tell the story.

The other big change is that the two love stories on Crockett and Tubbs are fleshed out a little more, especially Jamie Foxx’s Tubbs story, which felt underwritten in the theatrical cut. What is also more obvious in this cut is that the two love stories are supposed to parallel each other, most notably in a shower sequence that both men have at different points in the film which is then linked again at the end of the film. This isn’t as powerful in the theatrical cut.

So it feels basically like the theatrical cut, but with a few little scenes added, and despite all of that I believe this version of the film clocks in at two minutes shorter than the theatrical cut, which only goes to show you how much better this new version is edited.

So yeah, I really like the Unrated Director’s Edition and recommend that you pick up this version of the film over the Theatrical Cut. The only thing I don’t like about the movie now (and then) is the soundtrack. Why does a movie made in 2006 about a TV show from the 80’s have a soundtrack that is so heavy on late 90’s music, and more specifically, on Chris Cornell? It’s really distracting and out of place. That’s a minor quibble though. If you were looking to see this before but were scared off by the middling reviews, well, now is the time to see the movie, as long as it is this version of it.