Movie Review: Miami Vice 2006

Back in the day, I was a fan of “Miami Vice” on tv. In fact, I am still somewhat a fan with the DVD set of the series, but, in looking back on it older, see that through the lens of time that it was often cheesy. When I finally watched the 2006 Michael Mann film that I had decided was going to be crap, I found myself surprised.

It was indeed not crap.

As much as I am not a fan of Colin Farrell, I found his portrayal of Crockett and Jamie Foxx’s as Tubbs tight and well played. The re-vamping of the team that included the usual Zito, Trudy, and Gina was a great change giving them more technical roles and more tooth than just being the bug guy and the hookers as it was from the tv show.

All of those changes leads me to the plot line and the technical aspects where undercover work was concerned and this movie did a good job with that. The creation of legends that would hold up and the mole hunt that had to happen as they were faced with a leak in the DC FBI. Good stuff.

Cinematography on this film was a bit on the shakey cam side and grainy, but, that is the look that Mann wanted on this and much of the night scenes were shot in a manner that lent itself to making you feel like you were really there without lights (and I believe they had minimal lights) so it meshed with the story. As I watched the film I could not but feel the heat and humidity of Miami and remembered my time down there working.

Good times… Mmm a Cuban and a Mojito…

The plot line just launches right off the bat and you are placed in a story that you know from seeing the show back in the day, but, you are faced with new and dirtier adversaries like the Russian mob and the tweakers with high RF transmitters. Its quick paced, down and dirty, and sleek in a 2000’s way that makes the 80’s Ferrari spider seem like a VW beetle.

Check it out.

CoB

Movie Review: “Hackers Wanted”

Somewhere in an undisclosed location, I had a preview of this film so here’s the review. Of course now that this movie is out on the intertubes everyone will see it soon so a review might be good.

I liked the film, it brought out some very good points about the posture of government and private network security as well as defined the differing types of players within the space. In the end, it was a little more driven about Adrian Lamo, but, all of the material leading up to his story was and still is, very important to understand.

You will see if you watch the film, the psychological landscapes of not only conformity and non conformity, but human natures predilection toward lackadaisical behavior and the systems breaking of the will on creativity through conformance. After all, government and society is at its core, predicated on a conformance mandate. Thus if you break conformance (i.e. laws) you are ostracized, or actually imprisoned.

Mix the two things together and add a healthy inability for humans to gauge long term threats and you have out current threat-scape coming at us where cyber-war and other network based security issues stem from. We simply have inter-networked ourselves into an insecure and overly connected system that could have great impact on us if attacked in the right way. Of course this is what I and many others in the field have been saying for some time and much of that time it has fallen on deaf ears.

Oh well, we either evolve or die…

In the end, this film could not come out at a better time I think. Adrian Lamo is out, on meds for aspbergers (the new medical excuse for certain types of hacking behavior.. Well its being leveraged by the McKinnon team at any rate) and with much coincidence in the air, had a couple articles on him on Wired as the news hit that the film was loosed upon the bit-torrents.

Hmmm coincidences…..

Oh, and just what prevented this film from being released? Some disagreement between producers and others? Or maybe some other pressures were involved? Too hot a topic for some? Moved the world into areas of grey that made them uncomfortable? Everything today seems rather black and white doesn’t it? Lamo was spanked, Deceptive Duo were spanked, Mitnick was not only spanked, he was really civilly gang raped where his constitutional rights were concerned….

But.. those guys are all collared now huh… Still though, I see little on the side of real and effective law out there on internet issues.. Well other than the whole RIAA MPAA juggernaut trying to make law out of whole cloth IP miasma…

Meh, we haven’t learned much..

If you get the chance to see the film do so. Maybe all you hacker types out there should have a download somewhere that you can do a screening of.

CoB