Vice or Virtue
It’s eight o’clock at night. You’ve just had dinner and are enjoying a refreshing Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic. You’ve had a long day at work and though you’d like to watch a little TV to unwind, you’re not after something that makes you think too much. How about a good mystery? Not overly cozy but not too dark. Maybe Poirot? Or Inspector Linley? Or Morse?
Ah, the joy of the good mystery. From BBC to Hallmark, there are hundreds of mysteries—stand alone or serial—to choose from. One’s from Sydney, Berlin, Cannes and Midsomer. If a crime has been committed, there’s someone to solve it whether it be a nosy parker Aunt or a war beaten officer of the law. I love mysteries. In my opinion there’s no other literary genre that gets to the core of human nature. Close to a 100% of crimes are committed for two reasons: money and sex; Or more appropriately, greed and lust. As the noble truths aptly point out, wanting is suffering and every criminal is looking to satisfy that feeling. But what about the detectives—amateur or professional—who make it their life’s work to catch these miscreants? Isn’t there something a little off about them too? Aren’t they also searching for something that can’t quite be fully got?
Show me a detective with a normal home life and I’ll huff and puff with incredulity. Of my favourite detectives—televised or written or both—every single one has problems. There’s Poirot with his endless OCD; Jack Irish and his penchant for messy relationships and endeavours; and Sherlock Holmes, whose habits and behaviour hit on every habit that prevents a person from functioning properly: cocaine, bi-polar disorder and the inability to forge and maintain lasting relationships. The man’s a mess and yet the best there ever was or will be.
Before I ramble on, let me explain why detectives and their problems is my topic for this week. Last night I finally watched to completion (without nodding off once) Michael Mann’s Miami Vice. Since it’s original release 19 years ago, the film—and it has to be called that and not a ‘movie’—has divided opinion. I vaguely remember general consensus in 2006 saying that it was a turkey, then by 2010 loud whisperings of it being a gem, and finally now it’s officially a cult classic. I’m no Harmony Korine (he calls it one of his favourite films for various in sundry technical filmic reasons), but Mann’s film is a visual masterpiece. From the cinematography to the way the camera handles its subjects, it’s a beauty. Though the acting is lazy--with zero chemistry between the stars (though Colin Farrell really does the best he can along with Naomi Harris)--the story is strong but weakly executed, and my biggest, most enormous pet peeve: the writing is all over the place. Disjointed, nonsensical dialogues where exposition was too often the name of the game (How Mann, with all his Hollywood clout, was unable to hire a decent writer or script doctor, is beyond me). Yet the film is somehow good and fairly watchable, for no other reason than the storyline that keeps it intact and moving is one about the messiness of a detective’s life. Farrell’s Crockett falls in love with drug ‘Queenpin’ Isabella—unintelligibly played by Gong Li (at times I wished she spoke in her native Mandarin and they had subtitles, but that would have added a layer Mann couldn’t have dealt with)—and that’s where the mess begins. As much as they’ve sort of come to it as themselves, the foundation of their relationship is one of lies. To it, that at the end when she realises who Crockett really is there’s no possibility of repair, whether she stays or goes.
There’s an episode of Golden Girls where the girls meet a young man who’s a little more than obsessed with Crockett and Tubbs. When Blanche confronts him, he honestly replies that living like Crockett is super expensive from the clothes, to the car, to the girls, no one in real life can live like that. The original Miami Vice was a bit of fantasy, where detectives played in the high stakes game of undercover policing with all the perks of a rockstar. I don’t want to poo-poo rockstars, some of them actually do have stable relationships, but Crockett’s TV life of sleeping with a different woman every episode didn’t make for a realistically happy life. Which is why the sadness and desperation with which Farrell plays him is all the more astute. You can’t be a deep cover cop and have a fairytale love life. And really that’s what I like most about Mann’s Miami Vice; he’s showing you the real, grimy, dark side of being a detective; That it’s not a happy existence. It’s one where your days are filled with anxiety, secrecy and incredible loneliness, even when you’re with someone. And perhaps, that’s what it means to be human: to balance the good of what you do, with the bad of what you just can’t have.
