It’s hard to imagine another production matching either the epic scope of Heat or the poetic perfection of the much more intimate Collateral, and Mann’s latest, indeed, does neither. It does, however, achieve a familiar degree of seriousness.

Miami Vice (2006) turns down the coolness factor and jacks up the drama. Instead of packing this product full of manic motion, the director spaces things out, inserting long silences and plenty of slow beats. The inevitable gunfights, speeding boats, lovemaking scenes, and raucous music make their appearance, but they are in nowise gratuitous: they are markers, flagposts of the real that together convey the excitement and risk associated with undercover police work.

This time around, the action drama teaches us little about the threat of bullets or explosives (though both wreak some pretty horrific damage in scenes which the faint of heart will want to avoid). The real tale here is about a more subtle kind of danger—that which accompanies prolonged deception.

Do you remember all those articles that critiqued American intelligence in the wake of 9-11? What the journalists were really commenting on was the dearth of trained impostors then in place throughout the world. I’m sure the situation has changed dramatically in the last five years. We probably have more secret agents infiltrating more hostile organizations than ever before, individuals trained to use all material and emotional means at their disposal to establish contact and build false faith with the enemy.

At what cost, our (illusory) sense of local or national security? What happens to a country or city whose safety depends so heavily on the prowess of professional liars? What does it do to the individual men and women trained to obfuscate for a living?

It’s all very well to revel in the imaginary adventures of a Sydney Bristow, Jack Bauer, or Ethan Hunt. Contemplating the psychological processes it must actually take to create such agents, however, is more than a little scary. If turning out your dime-a-dozen, trigger-happy soldier requires some degree of dehumanization, constructing highly skilled shape-shifters able to feign both criminal bloodlust and romantic ardor (as required by the situation) might well necessitate a fracturing of the sympathies and, perhaps, the soul itself.

The Sonny Crockett for a new millennium experiences such a splintering when he falls in love with one of the targets of his investigation. It’s a familiar story, but Mann redeems it from cliché by treating it seriously instead of casually (i.e. James Bond) or overly erotically (i.e. Bad Boys). In the final analysis, Sonny’s divided sympathies produce a two-edged betrayal that fulfills neither the dictates of the legal system nor the desires of his heart, leaving him the victim of his deceitful profession.

As a consequence, though the good guys win and most of them live, the film’s conclusion feels much more gloomy than is usually allowed by the genre, providing a nice bit of melancholia to wash out the bitter taste of Hollywood’s most recent blockbuster.