Edgier than the TV series, Michael Mann’s take on Miami Vice is gritty and intoxicating

Where the 80s series was all pastels and shoulder pads, the noughties action thriller has flip phones and Linkin Park – a better fit for a less optimistic world

On its release in 2006, Michael Mann’s Miami Vice seemed primed to quickly fade from cultural memory. A summer blockbuster with the flavour-of-the-month hook that it was based on a popular 80s TV series, the film was at the time coolly received by audiences and critics, in part owing to how wilfully dissimilar it was from the show that inspired it.

Now, 20 years later, there’s a different picture. Critics have since declared Miami Vice “genius” and a “demented masterwork”, while the fervency of the film’s fandom today rivals that of arguably any movie by the Heat and Collateral film-maker Mann.