irst off, Miami Vice is not a reiteration of the pastel-shaded '80s cop show; when it premiered, Michael Mann’s original was like nothing anybody had ever seen on TV. The show pushed television closer to the movies, awash in vibrant colours, and every week viewers would drift into the fantasy of these crime fighters in exotic locations. With MTV glitz, ambitious storytelling, a cutting-edge soundtrack and a line-up of celebrities-to-be: Miles Davis (as a pimp), Leonard Cohen (as the head of Interpol), Julia Roberts (a Mafia mistress), and James Brown (as Lou De Long).

Grimly determined to re-brand his franchise as anew, Mann has turned the current day Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs (Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx respectively) into a pair of ruthless nighthawks, very much at home in hopping clubs, threatening parking garages, and speedboat races up canals by moonlight. And we're not stuck in Miami either - the film takes us to the far corners of South America, including Ciudad del Este at the intersection of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina.

Our male protagonists pick up women with a confident nod, break wrists with a twist of the finger and unravel drug ring mysteries faster than Jessica Fletcher. Yet, the plot is so easy to follow, that it hardly commands your attention: A slimy Fed, realizing that his sting operation has been compromised by someone within his unit, recruits the duo to go undercover to find out who botched an FBI operation that caused the death of a key informant. But all this proves to be a bit of a McGuffin as Crockett and Tubbs soon stumble upon a globalized crime syndicate that gives way to the real story.

The vice cops are dedicated to justice, but they are addicted to lusty romance for our muchly appreciated, steamy subplot action. Crockett is drawn into a relationship with the mobster's exotic ice queen of a financial adviser (Gong Li), treating us to our first sizzling shower scene of the day. Tubbs, meanwhile, lives with fellow vice cop Trudy Joplin (Naomie Harris), which sets the stage for sizzling shower scene number two.