Miami and the Caribbean Corridor Miami Vice
Miami Vice was filmed across four countries — the United States, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Paraguay — with additional footage from locations near the Argentine-Brazilian border at Iguazu Falls. Mann's insistence on shooting in real locations rather than on studio backlots or with green-screen compositing was both an artistic commitment and a logistical nightmare. The geography is not background — it is the film's argument about the scale of modern drug trafficking, which operates across national borders, time zones, and jurisdictions in ways that local law enforcement cannot match.
Mann shot Miami as a nocturnal, grain-heavy city under threatening skies
The film's Miami is not the Miami of the television series — neon-lit, palm-lined, glamorous. It is a working city photographed on HD digital video under overcast skies, at dawn, at midnight, in rain. The Thomson Viper camera captured cloud formations with a density and texture that celluloid could not match, turning the sky into a compositional element that dominates the frame. Dion Beebe's lighting emphasized single sources: the sodium vapor of highway lamps, the fluorescent wash of hospital corridors, the industrial light of shipyard structures.
Principal Miami locations included the Mansion nightclub (the opening sting), Government Cut and the Miami River (the boat sequences), and the port facilities that served as the shipyard for the climactic firefight. (imdb)
The triple border compound establishes the cartel's continental reach
Montoya's compound near the triple border of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina — where the Parana River meets the Iguazu — places the cartel's base of operations at a geographic point that symbolizes jurisdictional impossibility. Three countries, three sets of laws, three intelligence services, none of which coordinate effectively. Mann shot at Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and at Iguazu Falls on the Argentine-Brazilian border to establish the location's physical reality. (wikipedia, imdb)
The Havana sequences were filmed in Atlantida, Uruguay
Cuba was inaccessible to a major American studio production in 2005. Mann used Atlantida, a coastal town in the Canelones department of Uruguay, as a stand-in for Vedado, the Havana neighborhood where Crockett and Isabella spend the night. The substitution works because Mann was not interested in postcard Havana — he needed a warm-lit bar, a street for dancing, and a bedroom shot in available light. The specificity of the location matters less than the emotional fact: Crockett and Isabella have left the operational world and entered a space where the system cannot reach them, temporarily. (imdb, wikipedia)
The Dominican Republic provided Haiti and the shooting that changed the film
The Dominican Republic served as the stand-in for Haiti, where Crockett and Tubbs meet Yero for the first time. The production's presence in the Dominican Republic also led to the most consequential off-screen event: on October 24, 2005, a violent confrontation between a police officer and a soldier resulted in gunfire near the set. Jamie Foxx left the country and refused to return, forcing Mann to abandon his planned ending and rewrite the climax for Miami locations. (collider)
Three hurricanes delayed filming and added to the budget
Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma disrupted production during the South Florida shoot, delaying filming by approximately one week. During one tropical storm, high-rise windows shattered and sent glass into the street near Farrell and Foxx. Mann recalled:
"You bet it was dangerous. As soon as we heard there were winds that high, we immediately wrapped." — Michael Mann, Collider