#Bad boys for life movie

They navigate the streets of Miami like, well, they’re in a Michael Bay movie, while also wrestling with emotional issues that are sometimes too complicated for the rest of the film. But working from a script by Chris Bremner, Peter Craig, and one-time director Joe Carnahan, the Belgian duo behind the camera fails to connect the sublime and mundane in Mike and Marcus’ (and the rest of the characters’) lives. “Ridiculous” is seldom a bad thing in over-the-top action movies.

#Bad boys for life movie

But even as a string of murders draws Marcus unwittingly back into service to help solve the case, Mike discovers a connection between their suspect and his distant past, disrupting his quest for vengeance as he and Marcus are forced to reflect on the legacy of their service.īad Boys for Life is the kind of movie where a woman, possibly “a witch,” smashes the urn of a loved one to retrieve a flash drive buried in the ashes rather than just opening the lid. Reluctantly working with AMMO, a tech-savvy team of young cops led by ex-girlfriend Rita (Paola Nunez), Mike searches for clues about the biker, the mysterious Armando (Jacob Scipio), a ruthless figure in Miami’s criminal underworld. But Mike emerges determined to find the attempted murderer and vows to track him down with or without help or authorization. Marcus prays for Mike to recover, promising God he’ll abstain from acts of violence (including his duties as a cop) if his partner survives. Overwhelmed by the arrival of his grandson, Marcus announces plans to retire, much to Mike’s dismay but while the two literally race one another on foot for the fate of their partnership, a masked biker drives by and shoots Mike, critically injuring him. Picking up 25 years after the original Bad Boys and 17 after its sequel, Bad Boys for Life opens with Mike and Marcus racing frantically across town in Mike’s Porsche to the hospital where Marcus’ daughter has just given birth. But incredibly, where it falls short is in their exterior lives: Michael Bay disciples Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah direct chase and fight sequences with their predecessor’s same frenetic, hyperstylized charge, but absurd plot twists and incompetent police work (even for a buddy cop movie) undercut what aims to be intermittently introspective fun. It’s a film in a franchise that seems like it’s growing up right alongside you, exploring the interior lives of cops Mike Lowrey ( Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) with more thought and depth than ever before. Yes, that’s damn-well a compliment.For a longtime action movie fan, it’s hard not to feel like you’re getting older in the most joyless way possible when you don’t like something like Bad Boys for Life. If anything, screenwriters Chris Bremner Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan’s emphasis on Mike Lowrey as a three-dimensional character and a more serious attitude toward action movie tropes after a borderline cartoonish sequel reminded me of Angel Has Fallen. I half-expected to hear cues from Alan Menkin’s Hunchback of Notre Dame score, and it’s a nice change from Bad Boys II’s “devil may care” attitude toward its violence and carnage. It’s no tearjerker, but the action climax is appropriately over the top and explicitly character-driven, while playing out amid almost literal fire and brimstone. No spoilers, but the final reel leans into melodrama in a way that I didn’t expect. Then the finale tips the proceedings halfway into opera. Even with extended riffing here and there, the sequel remains a well-made and well-staged old-school action movie spectacular. Like the first Bad Boys, the film prioritizes bursts of (occasionally shocking) violence over extended action for as long as required, so that the last couple of action scenes can deliver the required pay off. The film pulls itself back by the end of its first hour, with the help of a terrific mentor/mentee moment from Joe Pantoliano, with a readjustment of priorities that lets the action play out in a forward momentum.

The film threatens to negate itself in the “second fourth,” as Mike’s intrusive, abusive and/or and borderline reckless police work threaten to pull the film into the “rooting against action” sandbox.