I'll confess to being a fan of the TV show. It was cool then, really. So the return of Crocket and Tubbs in an updated, more mature Michael Mann flick sounded very cool indeed. I expected macho brooding set to a rocking soundtrack, which I got, but I had hoped for more.
I found the characters hollow and the plot hard to follow, or perhaps simply uninteresting. I can't help but like a film that feels like a music video circa 1988, and I can't rember the last time I heard some loud Chris Cornell fueling a scene – oh yeah, that was Collateral, Mann's last film. But that was better.
I do enjoy Mann's stylish episodes, and wanted to like this one. This update to the cheesy 80's hit could've gone two ways and been successful: either cheese it up even more as a kind of self parody (think Will Farrell and Dave Chapelle, but Mann wouldn't go there), or take it to a whole new level of style, image, sex, color, and music. I think the latter was attempted, but I couldn't get Don Johnson out of my head - which probably should've been the main goal.