Bad Boys for Life is full of bullets, explosions, and quips, but is it any good?
That depends what you're looking for.
Here are our picks for the five best -- and five worst -- things in this long-dormant
action franchise's latest installment.
It's been more than 15 years since they last teamed up, but Will Smith and Martin Lawrence
haven't lost a step.
By this point in their careers, both actors have their shticks down pat, and in Bad Boys
for Life they deploy their respective charms with military precision.
The action scenes are nice to look at, but the banter between the two leads is where
you'll find the real fireworks.
"Hands behind your head, right now."
"I got this — I'mma penetrate this man's soul with my heart."
When the script is clunky and the dialogue cliched, Smith and Lawrence still make it
work.
In a different world, Smith and Lawrence would've been a modern Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
Since that didn't happen, we'll take whatever we can get.
Not all Bad Boys are created equal, and Bad Boys for Life proves it: This is Mike Lowrey's
movie.
He's the one who's targeted by the bad guys, he's the one who has the biggest character
arc, and he's the one who drives the action forward.
Unfortunately, that makes Martin Lawrence more of a sidekick than an equal player.
In the first Bad Boys, Marcus is very funny, but he's also depicted as a capable cop and
legitimate tough guy.
In Bad Boys for Life, he's little more than comedic relief.
While Mike is out busting heads and chasing leads, Marcus is stuck at home, engaging in
sitcom-style slapstick.
We get it, of course: Will Smith is the bigger star.
But Bad Boys is supposed to be a partnership, and in the series' third installment, Smith
is clearly the star of the show.
"Yo, day one, Miami Beach, son.
Little Mike Lowery got me tearing up about this thing."
The first Bad Boys came out 25 years ago.
Will Smith is now 51.
Martin Lawrence is 54.
To pretend that they're both still young would be ridiculous.
But Bad Boys for Life lets its actors show their age — and it's a better movie for
it.
Lowrey and Burnett are still cop caricatures, but they feel more lived-in than ever before,
which helps to sell the drama.
"It's probably the last year my knees will work."
"Ha."
"Ha ha ha."
The characters' ages also let Bad Boys for Life tackle an inconvenient truth: Bad Boys
hasn't aged particularly well.
The older movies are homophobic and slightly racist.
Lowrey and Burnett's shoot first, ask questions later-style of policing is a little harder
to swallow given recent conversations about police brutality.
Bad Boys for Life deals with those issues, at least indirectly.
It's still gleefully un-PC, with a fantastically high body count.
Still, a little self-awareness goes a long way.
Bad Boys for Life succeeds because of its cast, but its script does them very few favors.
Many of Smith and Lawrence's one-liners, especially those in the first half of the movie, feel
stale.
We've seen a cop pulled out of retirement for "one last job" so often that it's beyond
a cliche.
Beyond some memorable villains and a couple of plot twists, most of the story is forgettable.
The same goes for the action scenes.
After 25 years, over the top, Michael Bay-esque explosion-fests are starting to have diminishing
returns.
The action gets the job done, but it's not particularly exciting or interesting.
This may be one of 2020's first movies, but in a lot of ways, it's still stuck in the
mid-90s.
Bad Boys for Life is the most personal Bad Boys film yet.
Marcus has always been a family man, but the one-two punch of a new grandkid and a fresh
son-in-law make him think about hanging up his gun and badge for good.
Mike has it even worse: At the beginning of the movie, he's gunned down in a surprise
drive-by shooting by an old rival, setting him on the road towards vengeance.
The Bad Boys have always been fun to watch, but in Bad Boys for Life, they're also relatable.
For the first time, it feels like we're getting a glimpse at what’s underneath their cool,
wisecracking demeanors.
The old "One last job" cliche never works out well for the people involved, and it's
never clear whether Mike or Marcus are going to survive until the credits roll.
There are real consequences for the characters in this movie.
Compared to Bad Boys II, in which the boys just up and decide to single-handedly invade
Cuba, that's kind of a miracle.
Bad Boys for Life raises interesting questions, and doesn't really do anything with them,
from Marcus' solemn promise to be done with violence to Mike's newfound sense of vulnerability,
and the anger that comes with it.
Both of those concepts suggest unique stories for the characters, but these weighty themes
generally end up either ignored, or just played for laughs.
Lowrey's fury is simply used as an excuse to get him involved with the investigation.
Burnett's attempts to keep from killing fuel punchlines, not character arcs, and pay off
with Marcus picking up a machine gun and kicking ass.
Now, this is Bad Boys.
It's supposed to be fun, not introspective.
Still, it feels like a bit of perhaps wasted potential.
Directors Adil El Arbi and Billal Fallah are the first people not named Michael Bay to
direct a Bad Boys movie, but don't feel bad if you haven't heard of them: Bad Boys for
Life is their first major American film.
Arbi and Fallah capture Bay's style without mimicking him completely.
They don't move the camera as much, and they give some of the bigger shots more room to
breathe.
By the time the movie's over, it feels clear that some new blood behind the camera was
exactly what the franchise needed.
So, about that plot twist...
Without giving too much away, Bad Boys for Life's third act kicks off with a major revelation.
As it turns out, Isabel has a much more personal reason for hunting Mike than the film initially
lets on.
Unfortunately, the big twist comes more or less out of nowhere.
It's a secret so big that even Marcus Burnett — Mike's best friend for over 25 years — doesn't
know about it.
That doesn't really ring true, and unfortunately, the reveal derails Bad Boys for Life's climax
and sucks all the fun out of the room.
Even worse, it needlessly complicates Mike Lowrey’s origin story.
Bad Boys establishes that Lowrey is a handsome, privileged trust-fund kid who always dreamed
about being a cop.
He takes his job seriously, but he's also entitled and not used to being told no.
It's a great, simple backstory that explains everything the character does perfectly.
It didn't need to be any more complicated.
Bad Boys for Life isn't the sort of film that you watch for callbacks, references, or Easter
eggs.
And yet, somehow, it's full if nods to the previous two films.
Even better, these Easter eggs don't call attention to themselves.
They're fun for diehard Bad Boys fans, but series newcomers will find them funny, too.
And boy, are there a lot of 'em.
Marcus' quip that the "Bad Boys" lyrics are hard to learn is a throwback to Bad Boys 2,
which reveals that he doesn't know the words to his own self-appointed theme song, as is
his reference to his one good butt cheek, after Mike shot him in the rear in the last
movie.
And then, of course, there's Michael Bay himself as the MC at Marcus' daughter's wedding, a
cameo that's tailor-made for the film nerds in the audience.
Even the kids at AMMO get in on the action.
When Will Smith dismisses the young task force as a bunch of High School Musical wannabes,
it's not just a sly dig: his co-star, Vanessa Hudgens, rose to fame as the lead of the Disney
Channel series.
Ending Bad Boys for Life on a cliffhanger feels unnecessary.
By the end of the film, Lowrey and Burnett have gone through complete arcs, and they're
content with their places in the world.
Dramatically, there's nowhere else for these characters to go.
But it looks like they're forging forward anyway; as of mid-January, a fourth movie
is already in the works, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Reportedly, we won't have to wait as long to see the Boys again as we did between 1
& 2, but one wonders if it wouldn't have been smarter to just wrap this unlikely series
up more tidily, and just go out on top.
The Bad Boys are getting older, and it really makes you wonder what they're going to do
for the next one.
At this rate, they're gonna have to start calling them Bad Grandpas.
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