Michael Mann’s work has always been marked more by style than substance–does anybody remember “The Keep,” one of the most visually striking but dumb movies of the 1980s?–but in the case of this splashy big-screen version of the television series with which he first came to widespread public attention, both have eluded him. In narrative terms the original “Miami Vice” was nothing more than a standard-issue cop drama, in which partners Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubas (Philip Michael Thomas) took down nefarious bad-guys on a weekly basis. (Its locale and the emphasis on drug dealing were somewhat innovative, but hardly revolutionary.) What really gave it distinction was its MTV-inspired look, reflected in its stars’ natty pastel wardrobe, the flashily neon color schemes (in which luminous blues and pinks dominated), the lustrous camera work and ostentatious editing. And it was a highly influential hit, lasting for five years from 1984 to 1989 and leading others to emulate its extravagant visuals. (The recent Fox series “Fastlane” was an almost slavish replica.)

Story-wise, Mann’s lavish two-hour-plus revisiting of his first big success basically follows the TV formula, resisting any urge to camp it up the way so many big-screen versions of old television series often do. In that respect it’s much more akin to “SWAT” than, let’s say, “Starsky and Hutch.” To be sure, it has a far broader sweep than the old series did: Cricket (now Colin Farrell) and Tubas (now Jamie Foxx) don’t just take on some local villains; after an FBI sting operation goes wrong and leads to the death of an erstwhile informant of theirs, the duo is recruited by the local Bureau head (Ciaran Hinds) to go undercover to bring down the perpetrators, and the pursuit ultimately takes them from Florida into some foreign climes in the Caribbean, Central and South America. But actually the whole plot, with its sleazy drug lords (laconic Luis Tosar and quietly oily John Ortiz), armies of thugs with automatic weapons, and boat chases, isn’t really much different from what you’ll find in other contemporary big-budget screen cops-versus-crooks actioners (or even those on television). Mann tries to add a whiff of sultriness by inserting romantic interludes for both his heroes–Tubbs’s with stay-at-home Gina (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and Crockett’s with Isabella (Gong Li), the cartel’s exotic finance chief–but the ploy doesn’t have much substance, not only because a joint-shower-and-bed sequence for each couple isn’t really enough to establish any emotional depth to the relationships (both episodes seem more dutiful than resonant) but also because of one of the script’s major flaws: the repetitive way in which the villains kidnap their opponent’s lady friends and use them as hostages to secure compliance with their demands. It’s a hoary old device, symptomatic of really lazy screenwriting, and the fact that it’s employed no fewer than three times here indicates that Mann was operating at low ebb. (It also suggests that the cops aren’t the brightest bulbs on the block, since they don’t notice the tactic and make no attempt to protect against it.)

Nor does the direction or the cast liven up the story much. Mann doesn’t even manage to keep the plot threads very clear, and his choreography of the action sequences is only middling (he does decently in a big rescue scene, but the final shootout is so murky it’s hard to tell who’s who). Among the actors, Farrell’s got by far the biggest part, but his mixture of gruff macho and frazzled sensitivity seems rote; Foxx, on the other hand, is pretty much hamstrung by a secondary part that gives him little chance to break loose–he’s all grim seriousness, not the best note for him to strike. Almost everybody else is wasted. Only Gong and Ortiz bring any energy to the proceedings, though her steely demeanor is degraded by one of those damsel-in-distress moments and he’s such a slimily nefarious creature that he might have stepped out of an old James Bond movie (Sean Connery vintage).

And “Miami Vice” doesn’t even shine in the visual department, lacking the stylishness the old show had in spades. It’s slick enough, of course–this is a big-budget project–but in a surprisingly conventional way: all metallic blacks, greys, dark blues and greens, without barely a snatch of vibrant color to give it some panache. Overall Dion Beebe’s cinematography comes across as depressingly routine, with little to distinguish it from that of most of today’s run-of-the-mill crime melodramas. And did we really need the phony atmosphere provided by periodic shafts of lightning with distant thunder clasps in the dark night skies, though it never bothers to rain? The music score credited to John Murphy is undistinguished, too, and the tiresome insertion of throbbing easy listening tunes during the romantic episodes is a cliche simply not worth repeating.

So what you wind up with is a “Miami Vice” that’s not nearly as stylish as the old TV series was, but just as vacuous in the narrative department. The result is a retread that comes to the showroom already bald.