Filmed a decade after his perfect heist film Heat, Michael Mann's 2006 crime epic Miami Vice remains a cult classic, but it blew open the doors for a more tactile, visceral brand of Hollywood action, while never neglecting the three romances at its heart.

Just this week, a fresh reboot from blockbuster master stylist Joseph Kosinski was confirmed, with Austin Butler and Michael B. Jordan taking over the iconic roles of Tubbs and Crockett — but Mann's first cinematic take is still as thrilling as ever.

The film grossed $164 million worldwide, but with a troubled production and an estimated budget of over $150 million,Miami Vice was far from the blockbuster Universal was hoping for.

The film has undergone a massive reassessment by critics and fans since it hit streaming, and that makes sense: Its harsh, dreamlike digital look and unconventional structure are hard to ignore in the context of early-aughts blockbusters.

As Mann's masterpiece hits its 20-year anniversary, fans of both modern action franchises and romance have ample reasons to give it another chance.

Miami Vice famously opens in medias res, thrusting viewers into the middle of a botched nightclub take-down with zero set-up. Jay-Z and Linkin Park's “Numb” throbs and synths fire like sirens before the viewer has a chance to get their bearings.

The bodies of sweaty dancers and faces of harried undercover cops, criminals, and sex workers fill the frames uneasily; some of the dialogue is even hard to understand.

Mann said in interviews with Indie Wire and Indie London that sensation was at the top of his mind; he wanted to make a harrowing action film that let viewers feel automatic rifle fire rattle their bones and blood spatter the lens.

Miami Vice's audience would feel like they were there, even if it meant a bit of confusion.

And Mann does just that in the film's first, terrifying, shootout, placing his camera right in the backseat of a car and showing exactly what a high-caliber sniper rifle does to an undercover Miami cop's body; an arm is torn straight off. Blood covers the interior and the lens, with bits of cotton stuffing from the seat filling the air.

To be sure, many audiences struggled to gel with Miami Vice's dark tone and dense webs of cartel trickery, feuding law enforcement bureaus, and surveillance jargon.

That, plus the film's initially bewildering digital look, led to the reboot's chilly initial reception by audiences.

Mann thrusts his characters into a world dominated by sudden violence and twists, a doomy atmosphere, and raw physicality that allows its romances to hit even harder.

The ultimately doomed love affair between Colin Farrell's Crockett and Isabella (played by the ethereal Gong Li), the money woman for Satanic cartel kingpin Arcángel de Jesús Montoya, only adds more to the tension.

Isabella is a savvy player in the game, who likely clocks Crockett as an undercover earlier than her employers.

But the pair find themselves uncontrollably drawn to each other, even as they both acknowledge that their love will likely lead to a dead end.

The swiftness of the romance could be hard to buy, but not when it's given just as much visceral attention as the film's relatively few shootouts.

To this day, Crockett and Isabella's speedboat ride to Havana, matched with Moby's "One of These Mornings," remains among the most boldly romantic moments in any contemporary action film.

And while the relationship between Foxx's Tubbs and Naomie Harris's uber-competent Trudy is violently disrupted by the film's cartel villains, Mann isn't afraid to linger on two tender, closely-shot intimate scenes.

This will give as much attention to the couple's physical expressions of love as he does the thunderous, grisly shootout that closes the film.