Miami Blues 4K 1990 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

An ex-con's first act of freedom is moving to Miami where he restarts his old criminal ways with even more potency.

Review 4K Movie

All in all, it’s not a bad crime movie… it’s watchable, which is important. I can’t call it a thriller—or a drama, for that matter—because the story itself lacks impact. It’s missing that certain something that sticks with you after watching it. No, *Miami Blues* is just an ordinary movie. With a simple script and cinematography… and good acting. It’s possible to figure out what’s “wrong” with it. There’s definitely “something” there… (there always is). In this case, that “something” is most vividly expressed in individual scenes and episodes, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t come together into a cohesive whole. As it turned out, a film that had the potential to be something like a Tarantino movie failed to become truly powerful and stylish. And all because *Miami* feels a bit raw, and in the very places that truly revealed its “cinematic” quality, George Hermitage diligently smoothed out the rough edges. In doing so, he made his film more commercial. On the one hand, that’s not bad, but on the other, it didn’t achieve a proper balance.

*Miami Blues* is a transitional film between the ’80s and ’90s, and you can really feel that in the movie. Some scenes are reminiscent of ’80s action movies and melodramas, while others evoke early ’90s cinema. The plot is simple: Fred, fresh out of prison, heads to Miami. There, he meets a prostitute and starts a new life—albeit in a rather strange way: he continues to steal money from people (this time under the cover of a police badge). Baldwin’s character turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag—a tough guy with a turbulent past and a future that’s far from rosy. And Jennifer Jason Leigh played a composite of all the protagonist’s prostitute girlfriends. To be honest, I didn’t buy into the characters as much as I did the actors themselves. They came across as too movie-like and unrealistic. Some of the scenes featuring them were actually pretty good, though—the scene where Baldwin gets his eyebrow stitched up, the scene where the protagonist gets “dumped” by his girlfriend, and the episode where his fingers get cut off (as if he’d been breaking people’s fingers throughout the whole movie, only to end up losing his own fingers in the end).

I don’t really want to write much about *Miami Blues* because I expected something a little different from the film, but… I can still recommend it. First and foremost, to people who love the ’80s and straightforward crime movies. The film is more interesting for its story than for its execution. The execution leaves me with rather mixed feelings due to the disjointed scenes and a certain raw, unpolished quality. Maybe it’s a movie worth watching again… who knows.