Twenty years after it divided critics, “Miami Vice” is dividing audiences all over again.
Michael Mann brought his new “Director’s Final Cut” to Beyond Fest in Los Angeles last night. Jason Reitman introduced the screening, and Mann stayed for a Q&A afterward. The cut certainly has people talking, and mostly not in a good way.
The source of the anger is the ending. Within an hour of the screening, my feed was full of people saying Mann had wrecked it, with one viewer claiming to be in a state of shock. Others were more measured. IGN’s Jim Vejvoda said the cut felt largely identical to the Unrated Director’s Edition until the ending hit.
One attendee theorized that the endless tinkering (this is now the third cut of the film) suggests Mann is still processing a production that never matched what he saw in his head. Hey, at least every version now exists for fans to choose from.
So what has Mann done to the ending that has left “Miami Vice” fans so angry? That’s where a World of Reel reader who attended the screening comes in. According to their account, the new cut closes on Isabella’s boat heading out to sea and Crockett standing alone at his car. Cut to black. Everything that used to follow has been removed: no raid on Montoya’s empty compound, no hospital scene, no “In the Air Tonight” cover over the credits.
Mann did promise a “significantly recut final act,” and that’s what he seems to have delivered.
The reader also mentions that this Final Cut drops the “dicking us around” scene, in which Crockett chokes out a man at the trailer park. It also loses one moment from the Unrated Director’s Edition: Isabella telling Crockett about her aunt’s house in Cuba. Beyond that, the reader says the Final Cut is very close to the Director’s Edition. Like that version, it doesn’t open with the nightclub scene set to Linkin Park and Jay-Z’s “Numb/Encore,” but instead starts with the offshore powerboat race.
I haven’t seen this version yet, so I’m taking the description at face value for now. But if it holds up, Colin Farrell’s Crockett is now a far lonelier man. Either way, we’ll be able to decide for ourselves as the Director’s Final Cut arrives on home video December 15, 2026.