In Michael Mann’s 2006 crime drama Miami Vice, Jamie Foxx’s Detective Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs acts as the more even-tempered, laconic and understated of the two lead detectives (including Colin Farrell’s more aggressive, unhinged Det. Crockett). In one scene near the end of the film’s first act, Crockett and Tubbs confront their informant, Alonzo Stevens (John Hawkes) on the side of an overpass, where he reveals that he had to sell out FBI undercover agents to the Colombian cartel to save the life of his kidnapped wife Leonetta. While Hawkes’ jittery, nervous, despairing performance is the most prominent element of the scene, perhaps most telling and effective is Foxx’s performance throughout the scene – demonstrating a staggering command and control of his emotions and physicality as a contrast to Hawkes’ affectations.
Viewing Foxx’s performance through the lens of Naremore’s perspectives, it is important to note that Jamie Foxx takes an extremely naturalistic approach to the character. According to Naremore, “the distinction between theatrical and aleatory events can be thrown into sharp relief and the audience can be invited to take pleasure in the difference between acting and accident.” For Foxx, this is illustrated by an intense, understated naturalism that invites the viewer to wonder how much of his acting is accident, or is deliberate training.
Throughout the scene, Jamie Foxx’s characterization and portrayal of Tubbs is as a man who, at all times, has (or needs to have) control over his situation. When he and Crockett walk together toward Alonzo on the shoulder of the road, Foxx keeps Tubbs’ physicality very lean and economical; he stands absolutely still, the wind whipping around his still frame as he and Crockett talk to Alonzo. Unlike the shifting and guilty Alonzo, Foxx keeps his eyes firmly locked on Alonzo, keeping his rapt attention at all times as he listens to Alonzo’s shaken confession of selling them out to the cartel in exchange for his wife.
According to Naremore, acting “involves a degree of ostensiveness that marks it off from quotidian behavior.” As Tubbs, Foxx is ostensive in very small, deliberate moments – his physicality is very still, but he makes distinct decisions to affect his character through the simple use of movement. Foxx’s first gesture in the scene occurs when he hears Alonzo talking about how he was the middleman. Foxx raises his arms up to waist level very evenly and deliberately, furrows his brow, and asks, “What? Fifteen percent?” In this moment, Foxx shows Tubbs still being in control of the situation – his inflection is inquisitive and slightly confused, but not aggressive or hysterical. Instead of demonstrating a sense of disappointment and frustration at Alonzo, he simply wants to know what is going on. Foxx’s comparatively flat affect as compared to Hawkes’ desperation helps to show him as the authoritative man in control, hoping both to learn information from Alonzo and to demonstrate a sense of mercy and calm.
Perhaps Foxx’s most ostensive moment in the scene, however, comes when he learns over the phone that Alonzo’s wife has been found dead by the SWAT team searching his home. This is the moment that breaks Foxx’s unique calm, in which Foxx has nothing he can really say to Alonzo to make him feel better. Instead, Foxx’s affect falls, he grows quieter and cannot quite seem to look at Alonzo in the eye. Rather than the deliberate, forceful cadence he had with Alonzo earlier in the scene, Foxx shows Tubbs’ lack of calm by making him stammer and search for the words as he says, “You don’tyou don’t, uh.you don’t need to go home.” Normally, Foxx is an aggressive, even-tempered agent of justice; however, in this singular moment, Foxx demonstrates his total lack of calm and surety, as he honestly does not know what to tell Alonzo. His “you don’t”s are evidence of Foxx illustrating and demonstrating the ways in which Tubbs attempts to relay this information to Alonzo. His stance also changes; his shoulders are slightly more slumped, his eyes less piercing and more pleading. Foxx, as Tubbs, looks at Alonzo not as a threat or an informant, but as a man he feels deeply sorry for, but is unsure of how to let his own defenses crack.
In delivering the news in the understated implication of “you don’t need to go home,” Foxx says it awkwardly, as if he does not expect or want to say it that way. However, he does not know how to put the news more gracefully. His affect is hushed and rushed, as if Foxx feels he needs to get the words out as quickly as possible in order to save himself more of the pain of delivering this news himself. When Alonzo pleads, “They said they wouldn’t hurt her,” Foxx’s response of “They lied” is heartbreaking, delivering that line with the same sense of reluctance, while also offering a tinge of anger in his delivery. It is also in that line that he takes his gaze away from Alonzo for the first time since the scene began, accepting the harsh news that he just gave to Alonzo while not wanting to see its effects. As the frame itself is “a theatrical anaphora, a physical arrangement that arrays spectacle for persons in an audience role,” Foxx must play to that frame. Mann frames this reaction in handheld camera over Alonzo’s shoulder, allowing the audience to see the full range of emotion in Foxx’s performance, all performed through small nuances like his downcast eyes, the still hand holding the cell phone, the guarded expression as he gives the news to Alonzo, etc. All of this contributes to a greater view of Foxx’s performance, particularly through Alonzo’s eyes.
While Foxx’s portrayal of Tubbs in this scene is interesting on a number of levels, one criticism of the scene could be that his understated performance hurts the scene. While the audience watches John Hawkes bare his soul to these two detectives, who simply stand stock still from him at a distance and react to his entreaties with mild curiosity and concern, it can be argued that this kind of disconnect does not make for an effective scene. As Alonzo’s world falls apart, it can almost be comical to see the lack of concern Crockett and Tubbs have for the situation at hand, even as Foxx delivers the news that would lead to Alonzo’s sudden suicide by semi truck in a matter of seconds. Foxx, in particular, delivers the line “you don’t need to go home” in a way that makes it seem like the news is a minor inconvenience. In this argument, you could say that Foxx could have done more in his performance to indicate that he was hoping to talk Alonzo down from any drastic moves, and extricate him from this dangerous situation in order to get more information out of him. However, as it stands, it is a scene that can either be read as incredibly understated or miscalculated in its use of understatement. As Naremore notes, “the aleatory quality of any film has less to do with how it was made than with what happens in an audience’s mind.” To that end, the effect of Foxx’s acting in this moment depends on how the audience interprets those decisions.
As Naremore says, “People in a film can be regarded in at least three different senses: as actors playing theatrical personages, as public figures playing theatrical versions of themselves, and as documentary evidence.” In the case of Jamie Foxx in Miami Vice, Foxx clearly offers a theatrical personage as Tubbs. In either interpretation of this particular scene in Miami Vice, Jamie Foxx’s portrayal is distinctly memorable, his performance made of distinct acting choices to make Tubbs completely and utterly in control, to the point of understatement and almost underplaying the scene. As he watches on fatalistically while a man’s life disintegrates in front of him, Foxx’s still, focused physicality and restrained vocal delivery showcase a man who is distinctly dedicated to keeping the situation calm, cool and controlled. While acting is “nothing more than the transposition of everyday behavior into a theatrical realm,” it is Foxx’s unique behaviors in this scene from Miami Vice that stand out as unique and ostensive.
Works Cited
Mann, Michael (dir.). Miami Vice. Perf. Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li. Universal Pictures,
2006.
Naremore, James. Acting in the Cinema (University of California Press, 1988).
