It’s been nearly two decades since Michael Mann last brought Miami Vice to the big screen, so it only seems right that we make a timely return to the revered ‘80s franchise
With Austin Butler’s stepping into Don Johnson’s white linen suits and Michael B. Jordan taking over Philip Michael Thomas’s role as Ricardo Tubbs, Miami Vice ’85 will revisit the original series’ mid-1980s heyday, drawing inspiration from its pilot and first season.
There’s plenty riding on Joseph Kosinski’s (Top Gun: Maverick, F1) prequel remake, so before the neon lights come back on, here are 10 movies and shows worth revisiting to fully immerse yourself in the world of Crockett and Tubbs.
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10. The Bikeriders (2023)
Kicking things off with one of Austin Butler’s most recent flicks, The Bikeriders gives you a slightly nuanced perspective if you only really know the American actor from the hugely popular Elvis Presley biopic.
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, and inspired by Danny Lyon's 1968 photobook of the same name, The Bikeriders’ relevance is more character-driven and follows a Midwestern motorcycle club as it evolves from a loose-knit community into a more volatile and increasingly dangerous subculture.
It isn't exactly a police procedural, nor does it share Miami Vice's sun-drenched setting, but perhaps that’s why it’s the best introduction to this watchlist away from the usual suspects that feature (and why it’s sitting in 11th).
9. Thief (1981)
Before Miami Vice, before Manhunter, and well before Heat, Michael Mann made Thief, a film that established many of the crime-sodden preoccupations that would come to define his esteemed movie career.
James Caan stars as Frank, a professional safecracker determined to complete one last major job and escape criminal life with enough money to build something resembling a normal future. Naturally, it doesn’t go as planned.
It’s early Mann – nocturnal atmosphere, neon-lit streets, industrial landscapes, all accentuated by the steady score of synthesiser music – but it’s also an important piece of the Miami Vice puzzle, where the director treats music, architecture, clothing, and colour as essential storytelling tools alongside any of the shady characters he puts on screen.
For anyone who wants to understand the creative DNA behind Mann's crime cinema, this is an excellent place to start.
8. Miami Vice (2006)
Michael Mann's own big-screen adaptation of Miami Vice is an unavoidable inclusion, if only because it shows how the same story, same characters, same Miami can carry across the generations.
After all, the 2006 version was released long after the original series had established its foothold in the cultural zeitgeist, so it had little interest in recreating the precise conditions of mid-1980s Miami.
Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx inherit Crockett and Tubbs (peak noughties casting), and Mann takes the original series' most recognisable pastel palette for a darker vision of contemporary undercover policing. Still, necessary viewing for anyone ahead of the franchise’s prequel remake.
7. Die Hard (1988)
Ho! Ho! Ho! John McClane might be better known for spending Christmas crawling through ventilation shafts than cruising around Miami in an expensive sports car, but I couldn’t have a list of my favourite American police movies (which this list is inevitably turning into) and not have Die Hard. If only to show what else was showing through the 1980s action-cop zeitgeist.
Bruce Willis excels in this completely unglamorous classic, spending the majority of the film sweaty, exhausted, frequently outmatched by one of cinema’s great villains, and increasingly aware that he's having a terrible evening.
Crucially, Die Hard also takes another swing at wealth and corporate power, and organised crime’s role in it all. So still on the same page as Miami Vice, if only a distinctly different playground from Miami's sun-soaked streets.
6. To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
If Miami Vice is the glossy, pastel-suited face of ’80s crime, William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. is its grubbier cousin, replacing the Miami beachfront with smoggy Los Angeles freeways.
William Petersen plays Richard Chance, a Secret Service agent who goes after counterfeiter Rick Masters (a brilliantly slimy Willem Dafoe) once his partner is killed. Before long, the case becomes a full-blown personal vendetta, and Chance starts bending (then flat-out breaking) just about every rule in the book to get his man.
Friedkin’s film landed smack bang in the middle of Miami Vice’s original run, and will always be spoken of in the same reverence – even if it doesn’t have half of Miami Vice’s cultural cachet.
5. Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Eddie Murphy was already a big deal by 1984 (Saturday Night Live, 48 Hrs., and Trading Places had seen to that), but Axel Foley is the role that turned him into a genuine global superstar.
Martin Brest’s film arrived only a few months after Miami Vice first aired, starring Murphy’s fast-talking Detroit cop who rocks up in Beverly Hills to investigate his friend’s murder and manages to annoy just about everyone he meets along the way.
It’s certainly not in the same Miami Vice style, but it does manage to show a completely different side of the ’80s cop: cheeky, irreverent, and gloriously undisciplined, let loose in a world of flash cars, sprawling mansions, and very dodgy rich people. Both titles also drag the screen detective out of the buttoned-up procedural mould and give him a whole lot more personality.
4. Scarface (1983)
For the same reasons as Die Hard, Brian De Palma's Scarface has to make this list because it represents the other side of the Miami Vice coin. Rather than following the detectives tasked with dismantling the city's criminal underworld, it puts us alongside the people making that underworld so lucrative in the first place.
It’s hugely violent and excessive, following Al Pacino’s Tony Montana as he rises through Miami's cocaine trade. Even after more than 40 years (a year before the original Miami Vice), it’s still one of cinema's most enduring portraits of criminal excess.
3. Lethal Weapon (1987)
“I’m too old for this sh–t,” remains one of cinema’s greatest quotes that has been adopted, celebrated, and bastardised by every American crime flick that’s come after it.
But beyond the now classic line, Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon established yet another motif that Hollywood would then spend decades trying to replicate: the buddy cop classic that sees two detectives with opposing personalities placed into increasingly dangerous situations, and watch their differences bring them closer together.
Mel Gibson plays Martin Riggs, a volatile narcotics detective whose recklessness is compounded by personal tragedy. Danny Glover's Roger Murtaugh is his considerably more grounded partner, a family man approaching retirement who would quite reasonably prefer not to be shot at every other Tuesday.
If Miami Vice perfected the cool, melancholic crime duo, Donner gave us the more combustible alternative.
2. Miami Vice (1984–1989)
The obvious place for anyone looking to immerse themselves in the world of Miami Vice is to, well, watch it.
Created by Anthony Yerkovich (and executive-produced by Michael Mann), Miami Vice followed undercover narcotics detectives Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) through Miami’s criminal underbelly.
It was peak ‘80s TV with cheesy music-video montages, iconic wardrobe choices (Crockett's T-shirt-and-unstructured-jacket combination helped redefine men's fashion), and Italian sports cars ripping it against a sunlit coastline.
Before Joseph Kosinski's big-screen return, take a well-timed trip down memory lane.
1. Heat (1995)
By the time Michael Mann made Heat, you knew what you were walking into when you bought tickets to one of his movies: professional criminals chased by obsessive detectives and all the chaos that the pair leave in their wake.
Heat, however, shows the director at the peak of his powers and remains one of the most influential crime films ever made.
A slightly older Al Pacino plays Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, a relentless Los Angeles detective pursuing Neil McCauley, a disciplined career criminal played by Robert De Niro.
This classic cat-and-mouse chase (and the ensuing fallout that surrounds the pair) is the obvious drawcard here, but what makes Heat such an enduring release is the way Mann captures an American era and immortalises it on screen. And with news that there’s set to be a sequel soon, now’s the best time as any to revisit this classic.