About a third of the way into Miami Vice, undercover detective Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) decides to romance a comely, half-Chinese half-Cuban drug trafficker (Gong Li). It's unclear whether he's motivated by duty, lust or both but they jump into a cigarette boat with "mojo" stenciled on the side and zip over to Havana for a sex and rum-filled interlude.

Their steamy tryst is risky, not least because she's intimate with her drug-pin boss. Too bad, then, the episode only prompts the question: Where's the mojo in this lackluster adaptation of the 1980s television show? Sonny and partner Rico Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) have had their attitude sapped and the women in their life aren't to blame. The movie's bloated sensuality lacks style.

Michael Mann, who created the series and has since helmed a few estimable movies, can usually be relied upon to manufacture cool thrills. His hip cop show was tremendously influential -- The Mod Squad of the Reagan era -- but he's traded in his detectives' pastel threads for black flak jackets, espadrilles for combat boots, convertibles for armored vehicles, and sunglasses for bulky earphones. He's also swapped out shimmering south Florida locales for non-descript industrial settings and calibrated action sequences for static drills that dwell on the logistics of drug-running.

Mann doesn't even make the surfaces shimmer. The sun rarely shines and nothing sizzles or pops until the final fifteen minutes when violent gunplay provides a jolt. Shot on digital video, Miami Vice's flat lighting and cinematography suggest he's going for a verite look that doesn't suit a mainstream summer flick. The nighttime scenes are missing the dread he found on the streets of L.A. in Collateral and the climactic shootout here can't hold a candle to the brilliant gun battle he staged in downtown L.A. for Heat.

Judging by their flabby performances, reports of Farrell and  Foxx partying to excess during the shoot were true. They must've expended too much juice in South Beach nightclubs because they certainly didn't bring any to the set. Whatever the cause of their sluggishness -- hangovers? -- they mumble and are more paunchy than pulpy, like the movie as a whole.

We meet Crockett and Stubbs scowling in a lifeless disco while trying to crack a slavery and prostitution ring. Just as things start to get interesting, they're interrupted by a call from one of their informants telling them an FBI sting has gone bad. When the informant and his family meet a grisly end, the boys and their crew (Justin Theroux, Elizabeth Rodriguez, and Domenick Lombardozzi) insist on taking charge; they infiltrate a sophisticated drug ring in order to nail the white supremacist gang responsible for the mayhem. They venture to South and Central American destinations for tense meetings, but mainly just talk on their satellite phones to arrange drop-offs or, in Sonny’s case, rendezvous with his new squeeze.

All the rigmarole is rendered conspicuous by the characters' insistence on saying "transpo" for transportation, "ops" for operations, "intel" for intelligence and "long and lat" for longitude and latitude. Mann, who gets sole writing credit, can be forgiven for canned dialogue and cheesy boilerplate (Rico's "Cool down!" for example). And there's no need for the psychological tension of, say, his whistle-blowing drama The Insider. Yet a yarn like this should be less opaque and lapses -- such as their Lieutenant locating a hostage in a ridiculously short amount of time -- should be papered over.

Miami Vice illustrates how contemporary television dramas (think 24) have eclipsed major motion pictures when it comes to original plotting. It also makes you appreciate Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. One can only hope Farrell and Foxx had tons of fun and/or, as with drug-running, the money was really good. 

(Released by Universal Pictures and rated "R" for strong violence, language and some sexual content.)