Bad Boys for Life
- A fun diversion from reality for a couple of hours. Just don’t think too hard about it, because it’s pretty ridiculous.
Full Disclosure: For what they are, I enjoyed the first two Bad Boys movies. They’re stupid, sure, but the interaction between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is entertaining, and there’s just enough flash and action to keep the story moving. For me, these movies fall into the category of “good Michael Bay”. He isn’t back to direct this third installment, but the formula seems pretty well established at this point.
Review
You basically know what you’re getting with a Bad Boys movie. Everyone drives luxury cars, people are constantly hanging out in hot clubs or on big yachts, and the lighting is always bright and perfect. Basically, the Bad Boys franchise is like the Instagram of movies. It bears very little resemblance to reality, but is still fun to look at from time to time.
I have no idea why it takes them so long to come up with sequels for this franchise – for reference, the first Bad Boys movie came out in 1995, a full 15 years before Instagram even existed – but not that much has changed in the world of Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence). They’re still Miami detectives who seemingly have licence to break any and every law and police procedure in order to chase down drug dealers, and Marcus is still threatening to quit. But when Lowery is gunned down on the streets of South Beach (don’t worry, he survives), Marcus makes good on his promise to retire, and after his recovery, Mike is forced by his long-suffering captain (Joe Pantoliano) to work with a young team of Miami PD investigators in order to find out who wanted him dead.
I don’t know anything about the directors of Bad Boys for Life, Adil and Bilall (their previous credits seem to only include smaller, foreign movies and a Wiz Khalifa video), but they’ve studied the Michael Bay playbook page by page. The constantly moving shots, the dramatic poses, the extreme close ups – it’s all there. So, don’t worry, Michael Bay may not have directed this movie, but his fingerprints are all over it. Oh, and he has a cameo too, just so we don’t forget that he’s involved in this franchise. Subtlety has never been his strong suit.
Mike and Marcus, still shooting people and blowing things up after 25 years.
Aside from the well-shot and over-the-top action sequences, and the constant banter between Mike and Marcus – things one would expect going in – there were a few other things that I enjoyed about this movie. I liked that they had the sense to delay the gratification of the boys teaming up again for at least a little while. After Marcus retires, Mike gives a pleading, impassioned speech, but Marcus just tells him no and actually walks away. It’s nice that the story doesn’t go entirely as expected (even if we’re back on track 20 minutes later).
I also enjoyed all of the acknowledgements that they’re, in the words of another action movie franchise, “too old for this shit.” The best example of this is when they show up at a club, and Mike attempts to smooth talk his way in, only to be told to get to the back of the line. They have to be rescued by a more age appropriate member of their new team.
Of course, this movie has all of the flaws that one would expect, with a number of sequences completely severed from reality at the barrel end of guns with unlimited clips. But you don’t go to a movie like this for reality, you go to be entertained. Which is why the thing that annoyed me the most is all of the half-assed moralizing throughout. It seems as though they’re attempting to give characters some sort of ethical dilemma about violence, but this is just annoying and unnecessary. There are two characters in this movie afflicted with this particular virtuous disease. If there were actually a meaningful internal struggle for a character, that might make it more palatable, but it never takes much before they’re picking up a gun and killing again, seemingly without any qualms. This is a familiar trope in action movies, and it’s almost always stupid.
Spoilers Ahead
New directors may have taken over, but they’re still using the Michael Bay playbook.
The villains in this movie are Isabel Aretas, played by Kate del Castillo, really leaning into the kind of role that made her famous - a drug lord, and her vicious and homicidal son, Armando (Jacob Scipio). As Armando completes kill after kill on his hit list, it becomes clear that Isabel’s hatred for Mike is something more than just business.
Once Joe Pantoliano’s captain character is killed, following an effective heart-to-heart with Mike, Marcus finally agrees to help out his long-time partner one last time in order to track down the killer. Shortly thereafter, Mike puts the pieces together and realizes that Isabel is behind it all. He relates the story to Marcus of one of his first undercover missions, where he fell in love with the wife of a drug lord, and she helped him become the man he is today, complete with his signature flashy style, before he ultimately betrayed her by sending her to prison.
More than that, however, is the fact that Armando is likely Mike’s son. This leads to more weak agonizing about whether or not Mike will be able to complete the mission. When the whole team finally descends on Isabel and Armando, a battle ensues, with the death of countless henchmen, before a final showdown where Armando has a change of heart and refuses to kill Mike after he tells him, and his mother admits, that Mike is his father. Armando dives in front of a bullet to protect Mike, and Isabel dies.
This is all fine, but the main problem is that it appears that we’re just supposed to forget about his numerous horrible crimes, and believe that Armando is rehabilitated at the end, just because he finds out who his father is. Still, like most of the rest of the movie, I guess we’re just not supposed to think too much about that, and enjoy the ride (or die). It’s a movie that’s entertaining enough if you’re able to do that.
The new team that Mike and Marcus are forced to work with - maybe future members of an extended movie franchise?
5 Quick Hits
There’s a fun little cut between scenes after Marcus has retired and Mike is still going about his cop life. It cuts back and forth between the two of them making the same movements but in two totally different situations – when Mike is throwing on his blazer, Marcus is throwing on a housecoat, when Mike is pulling back on the gear shift in his car to speed up, Marcus is pulling on the lever on his La-Z-Boy recliner, etc.
Vanessa Hudgens plays one of the young new team members, and doesn’t have much to do in this movie. She’s made a nice career for herself, in a fairly seamless transition from child actress, but I can’t help feeling that there’s something more there that we haven’t seen yet. She has an undefined spark that I hope gets utilized at some point in the future in her career.
There’s a very small role by DJ Khaled as a drug lord-connected butcher. Sadly, he didn’t introduce himself by shouting out his character’s name, or say anything along the lines of “we the best pork chops!” Disappointing.
I enjoyed the little call back to a funny scene from the second movie, with the character of Reggie, the kid who was trying to date Marcus’ daughter. He’s now all grown up (now a military man) and against all odds they’re still together!
There’s a short after credit scene where it seems as though they’re trying to extend the franchise by passing it off on a new character. It’s no surprise. Bad Boys exists in the same space as the Fast and Furious movies, whose producers were much quicker to see the benefits of an extended franchise, even though the original F&F movie came much later than the first Bad Boys film. If the Bad Boys crew could have even half the box office success of Vin Diesel and the gang, it would be worth the effort.
