Plot
While working an undercover prostitute sting operation to arrest a pimp named Neptune, Miami-Dade Police detectives James "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs receive a frantic phone call from their former informant Alonzo Stevens (John Hawkes). Stevens reveals that he's planning to leave town, and, believing his wife Leonetta to be in immediate danger, asks Rico to check on her. Crockett learns that Stevens was working as an informant for the FBI but has been compromised. Crockett and Tubbs quickly contact FBI Special Agent in Charge John Fujima (Ciarán Hinds) and warn him about Stevens' safety. Tracking down Stevens through a vehicle transponder and aerial surveillance, Crockett and Tubbs stop him along I-95. Stevens reveals that a Colombian cartel knew that Russian undercovers were working with the FBI from the start and had threatened that Leonetta would be murdered via a C-4 necklace bomb if he didn't confess. Rico tells Alonzo that he doesn't have to go home. Having learned her fate, Stevens, in a state of grief, commits suicide by walking in front of an oncoming semi truck.
En route to the murder scene, Sonny and Rico receive a call from Lt. Castillo (Barry Shabaka Henley) and are instructed to stay away. He tells them to meet him downtown, where they are introduced to John Fujima, head of the Florida Joint Inter-Agency Task Force between the FBI, the DEA, and ICE. An angry Crockett and Tubbs berate Fujima for the errors committed and inquire as to why the MPD wasn't involved. Fujima reveals that the Colombian group is highly sophisticated and run by Jose Yero (John Ortiz), initially thought to be the cartel's leader. Fujima enlists Crockett and Tubbs, making them Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force deputies, to help, and they continue the investigation by looking into "go-fast boats" coming from the Caribbean, delivering loads of narcotics from the Colombians. They then use their Miami informant contacts to set up a meet and greet with the cartel.
Posing as drug smugglers "Sonny Burnett" and "Rico Cooper", the two offer their services to Yero. They find out Yero is the cartel's security and intelligence man. After a high tension meeting they pass screening and are introduced to Archangel de Jesus Montoya (Luis Tosar), South Florida's drug trafficking kingpin. In the course of their investigation, Crockett and Tubbs learn that the cartel is using the Aryan Brotherhood (AB) to distribute drugs, and is supplying them with state-of-the-art weaponry. Crockett is also drawn to Montoya's financial advisor and lover Isabella (Gong Li), and the two begin a secret romance. Tubbs begins to worry that Crockett may be getting too deeply involved in his undercover role and fears for the team's safety. Those fears are soon realized as Trudy (Naomie Harris), the unit's intelligence agent, is kidnapped by the AB, and her life is threatened with a bomb the same way Leonetta's was unless the loads Crockett and Tubbs were delivering are directly handed over to the AB. With Lt. Castillo's help, the unit triangulates Trudy's location to a mobile home in a trailer park and performs a rescue, but she is critically injured in the aftermath when Tubbs fails to clear her in time from the mobile home and the bomb explodes. Soon afterwards, Crockett and Tubbs face off against Yero, his men, and the AB at the port of Miami.
After the face-off, Crockett begins to call in backup. When Isabella sees his police shield and sees him using the radio, she realizes that he's undercover. Betrayed, she demands that Crockett tell her who he really is. After the gunfight, Crockett takes her to a police safehouse and tells her she'll have to leave the country and return to her home in Cuba. As Crockett and Isabella stare at each other while Isabella is on a boat slowly drifting off, Crockett takes one last glance, walks away, and drives off. Meanwhile, Tubbs is in the hospital holding Trudy's hand as she grasps his, signifying that she's recovering from her coma. Isabella cries in the boat, while Crockett heads into the hospital's entrance to visit Trudy.
Read more about this topic: Miami Vice (film)
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