Rent Bad Boys on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: George Gallo (story), Michael Barrie & Jim Mulholland and Doug Richardson (screenplay)
Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Téa Leoni, Joe Pantoliano, Marg Helgenberger, Tchéky Karyo, Theresa Randle
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
Two hip detectives protect a witness to a murder while investigating a case of stolen heroin from the evidence storage room from their police precinct.
Verdict
It's a movie with a lot of potential due to the stars and their chemistry, but it lacks any substance whatsoever. It's a lot of action, most of it muddled due to frequent close ups, punctuated by Smith and Lawrence performing basically improv comedy as they impersonate cops. Much of this movie is guided by attempting to be cool. This movie makes many attempts from action to comedy to story but nets few successes.
Skip it.
Review
The movie was originally written for Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz. I have to imagine this version is better than that. While it was Bay's debut feature film, he didn't like the script and asked Smith and Lawrence to improvise many of their scenes. This spawned a franchise; as of 2024 Bad Boys consists of four movies.
What kind of cop drives a brand new Porsche? Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) is a cop despite a sizable trust fund. That provides the setup for several jokes as Mike gets to be the playboy living a lavish lifestyle, contrasting with his partner Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) who's a middle class family man. The pair gets car jacked, continuing their argument which distracts and allows them to thwart the would be robbers.
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| Will Smith, Martin Lawrence play Mike Lowrey, Marcus Burnett |
A drug robbery of police evidence creates a tense situation that only gets worse when one of Mike's informants is killed searching for information on the robbery. Her roommate Julie (Téa Leoni) saw the murder but managed to escape. For a reason that can only be to pad the story and run time, Julie calls Mike at the station and the captain pushes Marcus to impersonate Mike. That sets up many jokes that grow tired much sooner than they end. The two switch lives to keep Julie safe.
Mike and Marcus have to put the pieces together to figure out what's going on. They argue like an old married couple which is a lot of improvisation. I rarely have a problem with crude language, but with this it's used as a frequent filler due to boring dialog. It's mostly them insulting each other. That lends to the humor that punctuates the action. Unfortunately so much of the action is filmed in close up that we never get a good sense of what's happening. That helps conceal the switch to stunt people, and increase the intensity, but it also makes the scenes disorienting. Closeups infer action without connecting sequences logically.
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| Téa Leoni, Will Smith, Martin Lawrence play Julie, Mike Lowrey, Marcus Burnett |
This really is a movie with characters playing at being cops. It would at least be more accurate if they were private investigators or hired security. At no point do they seem like cops or adhere to any of the constraints imposed upon police. Despite the potential of the actors, the story really is the downfall. This hoped to coast on name recognition, and it did just that at the box office.
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