As well as bringing the original super-cool, super-silly Miami Vice to our shoulder-padded sofas in the 1980s, Michael Mann is responsible for Collateral and Heat, two of the best crime capers to emerge unscathed from the Hollywood deflavoriser. So you’d think he’d have ensured the success of Crockett and Tubbs’s big-screen debut. He didn’t. I blame the plot as much as the acting. What was so wrong with the original? Goodies chase baddies; police rules bent in the process; Ferrari chase; bad guy shot; the end. Why do we have to have a syrupy love story? Why do we need so much shagging in showers? Why did Colin Farrell have to extend the Crockett moustache to the lengths of a wife-beating Appalachian? And, most important, why is everyone in this film too cool to enunciate properly? Don’t buy this, and only rent it if you never saw the original, you think Farrell is an excellent actor and Strictly Come Dancing is finished.
The extras are cursory, but better-enunciated. MR
Universal, 15, 134 mins; £19.99
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Cars
Film Three stars
Extras Four stars
The latest animation to be released by the technical wizards at Pixar studios doesn’t quite live up to the standard of previous creative triumphs such as The Incredibles or Toy Story. The blending of first-rate vocal performances with groundbreaking animation has long been a hallmark of Pixar presentations, and while Cars doesn’t disappoint in this respect, it lacks the energy and charm that made its predecessors so appealing. The story centres on a hot-shot race car (ably voiced by Owen Wilson) who is humbled when forced to spend time in an out-of-the-way town on old Route 66. The film is visually impressive, but the central theme — nostalgic pining for small-town Americana — may be difficult for younger audiences to relate to. The extras are all worth watching, featuring an informative “inspirations” documentary, deleted scenes and two entertaining shorts. CE
Buena Vista, PG, 124 mins; £21.99
L’Armée des ombres (Army in the Shadows)
Film Four stars
Extras Four stars
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Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic but controversial 1969 account of the French resistance is as fascinating for what it isn’t as for what it is. It’s fun to imagine what a director like Steven Spielberg might have done with the same raw materials. Joseph Kessel’s wartime novel, which Melville adapted, is a mosaic of first-person narratives chronicling audacious heroism, brutal reprisals, daring escapes, savage betrayals and loyalty under extreme duress. All this unfolds, however, in the gravest manner, and in an arrestingly muted palette of Sean Scullyish twilight shades that runs from drizzly slate through to cobalt. Whereas a Hollywood director would have cranked up the soundtrack and occasionally allowed his underground heroes the Gallic equivalent of a high five, Melville’s film, though tense, drags in places. Yet it haunts you. Epitomising its laconic style is the grippingly spare performance of its existential hero, Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), most moving as an outsider-observer in the mise en scène in blitzed wartime London.
This DVD package is near faultless. The print has been cleaned up. Professor Ginette Vincendeau’s English commentary is informative, particularly about how pro-Gaullist the film is, but never strays into pretentiousness, though the Cahiers du Cinéma essays in the booklet do. Among the extras are two timepieces: Le Journal de la Résistance, filmed as the Nazis left Paris, here with Noël Coward’s over-the-top commentary; and a four-minute profile of the film-maker. PN
BFI, 12, 145 mins; £19.99
Satantango
Film Four stars
No extras
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The films of Bela Tarr are the ultimate antidote to Hollywood. Anyone who’s seen the recent, Tarr-influenced work of Gus Van Sant will have some idea of what to expect — long takes, minimal narrative and hypnotic music. But compared to Tarr, Van Sant is a dilettante. Structured like a tango in 12 chapters, moving forwards and backwards in time, this lasts a buttock-numbing seven hours. It observes the workers of a post-communist Hungarian collective farm as they go about their daily lives, cuckold each other, dance or plot to abscond with the year’s collected wages; all the while waiting for the return of the quasi-messianic figure of Irimias. It is reminiscent of Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos (though Tarr cites Cassevetes, Bruegel and Bosch), with shot lengths depending on rhythm rather than content, which occasionally extends to redundancy. More often, though, the effect is mesmerising, creating a tragic, sometimes blackly humorous portrayal of, in one character’s words, “the persistent and hopeless fight for human dignity”. JP
15, Artificial Eye, 419 mins; £29.99