"Miami Vice," based on the '80s TV show about the stylized, musicalized, heavily armed, beautifully dressed icons Crockett and Tubbs, seems to deal with multiple conspiracies involving the Aryan brotherhood, a Colombian working out of Paraguay with a Chinese Cuban accountant, and a motley variety of Caribbean pond scum, each pushing an angle, betraying a confidence and looking for the big feed.

This Crockett and Tubbs, however, instead of masquerading as high-lifers in all the cool joints along the beach, are harder sorts: specialists in clandestine transfer, with an organization that's extremely tight (because it's made up of cops). Using this cover, they infiltrate the various units and seem tasked at one point or another to locate an FBI mole.

The plot is largely meaningless (as were the plots of the TV series), somewhere between "not a lot of plot" and "lots and lots of plot." But the worst news about "Miami Vice" is that Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, replacing Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in the key roles, don't hold a candle, a flashlight, a freakin' match to the original guys. As the infantile, muttery "stars" of today do their thing, you keep thinking: Who are those guys? Farrell appears to be a rarity in undercover culture, a vice cop who goes on the lowdown as an Irish beatnik. Oh, that's a good disguise for South Beach. As for Foxx, he's still channeling Ray Charles through squinty eyes and a kind of shaky head.

They have zero chemistry: There's no affection or sense of joshing, and their relationships with their women are the most uninteresting thing about the movie. And that's odd, because the most interesting thing about the movie is those women (Gong Li, Naomie Harris and Elizabeth Rodriguez). I wish the movie had been about them.

-- Stephen Hunter (July 28, 2006)

Contains violence, profanity and sexual innuendo.