Sun-Drenched Seduction: Miami Neonoir

The cloud of anxiety that Bully spreads dissipates in a very different, crackling look at South Florida, from one of its greatest storytellers—Elmore Leonard. For every drop of terrifying nihilism Bully oozes, Out of Sight—directed by Steven Soderbergh from a Scott Frank script based on the Leonard novel—responds with wit, charm, and a knowing, sexy wink. The cast, led by George Clooney as primo heist man Jack Foley, and the underrated and nuanced Jennifer Lopez as federal marshal Karen Sisco, is an exercise in quiet confidence—Out of Sight’s characters feel vibrant and real, their dialogue sparkling with Leonard’s wordplay, their tics and mannerisms helping to create people one would only find in the Miami region. And it is loaded with a murderer’s row of stellar supporting actors—including Catherine Keener, Dennis Farina, and Ving Rhames. Out of Sight adds a lived-in, comfortable air to Leonard’s spikey novel—a book that never spirals into self-parody, walking the balancing act that Leonard defined so well, one that keeps readers chuckling but also desperately flipping the pages to see what comes next.

Soderbergh very smartly leans into that sense of comfortable familiarity. We enjoy the banter and are shocked by the violence but are kept engaged by the sheer chemistry between the two leads. This isn’t a film loaded with complex shots or challenging narrative touches. Soderbergh lets the viewers soak up the sun and enjoy the show—a bit of a throwback to classic Hollywood except baking under the relentless Florida sun. Clooney’s Foley is unflappable, until he isn’t, Lopez’s Cisco is stoic and defiant until she cracks. It’s those peeks into what’s under the hood—like Cisco’s complicated attraction to Foley, or the thief’s own twisted sense of loyalty and romance—or in the trunk, as the iconic scene between the two reveals, that keep you guessing and watching. In an era where everyone was scrambling to imitate the nervous, twitchy energy of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Out of Sight chose to go its own way, opting for something more poised and classical—and in the process gave viewers a whistle-stop tour of corners of South Florida that might not have seemed real: a dingy South Beach apartment, a prison tucked away in the swamps north of Broward county, swanky restaurants. Soderbergh’s film, like the novel it is based on, feels confident and lively, exuding the warmth of a predictable vinyl scratch to make the crime noir plot itself go down more smoothly.

Though not nearly as successful at navigating the gray area between hard-boiled crime and outright comedy, Miami Blues, based on the Charles Willeford novel of the same name, is still an entertaining look at the city and the different kinds of characters who call it home. The film follows Alec Baldwin’s Junior, a con artist and psychopath, who lands in Miami already on the run. Junior is an agent of chaos, perpetually on the wrong side of the law. Police detective Hoke Moseley, played capably by Fred Ward, is pulled into the case, and yanked out of his dead-end motel life. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Susie Waggoner, a part-time sex worker and student, who caps the film off with a gut-punch of a last line—evoking the chaotic power of the characters, as well as film’s take on Miami, which feels perpetually on the brink of falling into the sea. Writer-director George Armitage taps into Willeford’s knack for dark comedy. The film shines best when Armitage gives his cast room to cook, and when he injects the story with the novel’s quirky, proto-#FloridaMan weirdness. Willeford and Leonard are often mentioned together in discussions of the great pantheon of Florida crime-fiction writers. With good reason. Both reflected character through sharp and vibrant dialogue—weird words spoken by even weirder people. Miami is less about the evil mastermind and more about the outsiders: the freaks and the panicked, people who don’t belong anywhere else or who are on the run from somewhere else.

If Out of Sight warmly pulls you through a shambling tour of South Florida’s far corners, Michael Mann’s Miami Vice does the opposite—buckling you into the passenger seat of a hotrod and speeding down I-95 with the top down—shaking free from the huge expectations it was saddled with, thanks to the long-running TV series of the same name, and shunting its audience into something more akin to a roller-coaster ride than a film. Unlike Mann’s previous work—masterpieces like Heat, Thief, and The Last of the Mohicans—Miami Vice is very much a vibe instead of a crisply plotted caper, one carried on the shoulders of stars Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell, who grouse and grin their way through the film with an ease that feels instinctual. There is no expectation of plot at the onset—and the viewer doesn’t get everything spelled out for them. The Miami that Mann introduces us to is dark, menacing, pulsing, and very much grinding to the beat of its own DJ. If the eighties TV series was a caricature of pastel colors, looming palm trees, and neon, Mann’s big-screen adaptation makes a sharp left on the Intracoastal—bringing you into a darker, grimmer Miami. It’s all visuals and texture, and it evokes the manic, grimy heart of the city in a way few films have before or since.

Miami is nothing if not steamy. And two films—Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat and John Bailey’s noir whodunnit China Moon—showcase that sexier and raunchier side of South Florida. Both bask in the trappings of classic film noir and blend them seamlessly with the conflicted paradise that is Miami and its neighboring areas. Ed Harris steals the show in China Moon as a withdrawn detective who’s pulled into the web of Madeleine Stowe’s sexy, married femme fatale. The film is smart enough to invert a few tropes of the genre, making Stowe’s character as much a victim as a predator, but also to know what works—keeping the narrative simple and primal, an exploration of the things people would do for sex, money, and everything in between. Bailey long lingering shots allow us to get to know not only Harris and Stowe, but also the small-town Florida backdrop they inhabit. The northwestern Florida scenery—with nods to Miami as a nearby metropolis—adds to the distant, isolated effect and, like Bully albeit differently, presents viewers with a look at a very different Florida from popular imagination: desolate, dangerous, and bubbling with deceit. Bailey also doesn’t go for the easy shock—China Moon is tightly plotted and character-driven, and while the sex scenes are a key part of the story, they don’t feel performative or like window dressing. It’s a story about lonely, desperate people longing for a path out—and perhaps not getting it, a fatalistic outcome that has always been pillar of a good noir story, and certainly of a film noir.

Similarly, Body Heat could have easily devolved into farce—a challenge for most “erotic thrillers.” But it lives up to its name not only in the sparks that fly between its protagonists, played by Kathleen Turner and William Hurt, but in every aspect of the film. Every surface, every texture, feels humid and coated with sweat or water. If Miami Vice is akin to the sensory overload of a Miami nightclub at 2 a.m., Body Heat is more lugubrious and sedate—as if the entire film were shot in a sauna. Though, like China Moon, Body Heat pilfers plot points and bits from classics like Double Indemnity and Chinatown, Kasdan manages to make the genre his own as he guides viewers through the fictional South Florida town of Miranda Beach. Like Harris and Stowe and so many conspiratorial pairs before them in the annals of film noir, Hurt and the mesmerizing Turner plot and connive in the wake of their carnal passion, elevated by Kasdan’s understanding of the genre and knack for sharp dialogue and the powerful contrast of the setting. Miranda Beach, like much of Florida, is beautiful and feels remote—almost surreal, like a fever dream that you don’t want to end. Miami, though not central to the film, does serve as a key alibi for Hurt’s Ned Racine, who finds himself in the throes of covering up a very noir mistake.

Like most good film noirs, Body Heat is more about the feeling than the precision-plotting, and both China Moon and Body Heat live up to that ideal, giving viewers a heady dose of illicit passion and sexual tension, making any plot holes easy to ignore in the glare of the South Florida sun. Noir, whether in the form of a film or a book, has always worked best when it springs from base human instincts and emotion—it’s not a genre for the distant and calculating, nor does it require a tightly wound plot or mystery. It’s primal, a form of personal escapism. And where better to detach from your past and your many mistakes than under the scalding Miami sun, while sipping your last piña colada?