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15 Best Movies Set in Miami

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Welcome to Miami.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

TV Shows & Movies - November 11th 2026, 17:00 GMT+1

Step Up Revolution — 15. Step Up Revolution (2012)
Flash mob choreography drives Step Up Revolution, the fourth entry in the dance franchise that started in 2006. The 2012 film sets its crews against the Miami art district of Wynwood, using real murals as backdrops. Kathryn McCormick and Ryan Guzman lead a cast picked more for movement than line readings. The dancing holds up even when the plot barely tries to. | © Summit Entertainment

Miami Blues — 14. Miami Blues (1990)
Alec Baldwin plays a con man posing as a preacher in Miami Blues, and he breaks a man's finger within the first ten minutes. Fred Ward plays the detective chasing him, missing fingers of his own from an old injury. The 1990 film came from Charles Willeford's novel and never found the audience its dark humor deserved. Jennifer Jason Leigh rounds out the trio as a prostitute who has no idea what she's wandered into. | © Orion Pictures

Cropped Any Given Sunday — 13. Any Given Sunday (1999)
Al Pacino spends most of Any Given Sunday yelling, and Oliver Stone built the whole 1999 film around that energy. The fictional Miami Sharks serve as a stand-in for every football team chewing up its players for profit. Cameron Diaz plays the team's owner, a role written specifically for a woman holding power in a locker room. Stone used over a thousand camera setups just for the game sequences. | © Warner Bros.

Cropped One Night in Miami 2020 — 12. One Night in Miami... (2020)
Four men sit in a motel room in 1964, and that's basically the entire premise of One Night in Miami.... Regina King directed the film, adapting Kemp Powers' play about Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown. The meeting really happened, the night Ali beat Sonny Liston to take the heavyweight title. King became the first Black woman nominated for a Golden Globe for directing because of it. | © Amazon Studios

Ace Ventura Pet Detective — 11. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)
Jim Carrey turns a missing dolphin mascot into ninety minutes of physical comedy in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The 1994 film was shot for roughly 15 million dollars and made that back many times over. Carrey improvised large chunks of his dialogue, including the infamous talking-out-of-his-backside entrance. Miami barely registers as a city here. It's just a stage for one man's chaos. | © Warner Bros.

The Birdcage — 10. The Birdcage (1996)
Robin Williams runs a South Beach drag club in The Birdcage, and Nathan Lane plays his partner pretending to be straight for a weekend. The 1996 film is a remake of the 1978 French comedy La Cage aux Folles. Gene Hackman plays a conservative senator who shows up expecting a normal family dinner. Mike Nichols shot the club scenes to feel like a real Ocean Drive hangout, not a set. | © United Artists

Theres Something About Mary 1998 — 9. There's Something About Mary (1998)
A stuck zipper, a dog named Puffy, and hair gel that isn't actually hair gel. That's the opening stretch of There's Something About Mary, filmed around Miami and the Florida coast in 1998. Cameron Diaz plays the woman every ex-boyfriend in the movie still can't let go of. The Farrelly brothers built the whole plot around how far people will embarrass themselves for one person. | © 20th Century Fox

Cropped 2 Fast 2 Furious — 8. 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
Paul Walker returns alone for 2 Fast 2 Furious after Vin Diesel skipped the sequel entirely. John Singleton directed this one, trading the first film's Los Angeles streets for Miami's causeways and canals. Tyrese Gibson joins as Roman Pearce, a childhood friend pulled into an undercover operation. The boat jump off a bridge was real stunt work, not a visual effect. | © Universal Pictures

Pain Gain 2013 — 7. Pain & Gain (2013)
Mark Wahlberg plays Daniel Lugo, a bodybuilder who kidnaps and extorts a client he used to train. Michael Bay based Pain & Gain on an actual 1990s crime spree committed by the Sun Gym gang in Miami. Dwayne Johnson plays an accomplice who survives a cocaine binge and finds religion mid-heist. The real Lugo is still on death row in Florida. | © Paramount Pictures

Bad Boys II — 6. Bad Boys II (2003)
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence trash a stretch of Miami highway in Bad Boys II, flinging cars out of a transport truck at seventy miles an hour. Michael Bay spent a reported budget north of 130 million dollars, much of it visible in the wreckage. The morgue scene alone needed over a hundred corpses built as props. Nothing in this movie asks you to slow down and think. | © Columbia Pictures

Bad Boys for Life — 5. Bad Boys for Life (2020)
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence waited seventeen years between the second Bad Boys movie and this one, and it shows in the plot. Mike Lowrey now has a son he never knew about, which drags the whole precinct into a revenge plot. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah took over directing from Michael Bay, and they keep the explosions but slow down for the characters. It made over $204 million domestically, the best numbers the franchise ever posted. | © Sony Pictures

Moonlight — 4. Moonlight (2016)
Three actors play Chiron at different ages in Moonlight, and none of them ever shared a scene together. Barry Jenkins shot the film in Liberty City, the Miami neighborhood he grew up in himself. It won Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars, after the infamous envelope mix-up with La La Land on stage. The ocean shows up three times in the film, always at a turning point in Chiron's life. | © A24

Miami Vice — 3. Miami Vice (2006)
Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx replace Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in this 2006 update of the original 1980s show. Michael Mann shot most of it on actual digital video, which gives the nightlife scenes a grainy, unfinished look. The budget ran past $135 million, partly because production moved locations constantly chasing weather and permits. Pastels are gone here, replaced by rain, glass, and gunmetal. | © Universal Pictures

Bad Boys Ride or Die — 2. Bad Boys (1995)
Michael Bay got his start as a feature director with Bad Boys, after years shooting commercials and music videos. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence play Miami narcotics detectives who swap identities to solve a case. The studio originally wanted Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz for the leads before Smith and Lawrence came aboard. It made back more than ten times its $19 million budget. | © Sony Pictures

Scarface 1983 — 1. Scarface (1983)
Al Pacino turned down the lead in Scarface twice before agreeing to play Tony Montana. Brian De Palma's film updates the 1932 original, moving the setting from Chicago bootlegging to Miami cocaine trafficking. Oliver Stone wrote the script while reportedly getting sober himself, which he's said gave him a clearer view of addiction. The film flopped on release in 1983 and only built its reputation later through home video. | © Universal Pictures

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Few cities look as good on camera as Miami, with neon, ocean, and trouble waiting around every corner. These films used it as the backdrop for crime, comedy, and everything in between. Here are 15 of the best movies set in Miami.

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Few cities look as good on camera as Miami, with neon, ocean, and trouble waiting around every corner. These films used it as the backdrop for crime, comedy, and everything in between. Here are 15 of the best movies set in Miami.