Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 124 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2020
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A surprising ‘threequel’ 17 years in the making, ‘Bad Boys For Life’ determinedly fills its runtime with superficially entertaining action and dumb but risible gags. However, watching the franchise through a post-#MeToo lens, the defining elements of the ‘Bad Boys’ brand – the male gaze turned up to 11, the bro-tastic machismo, the mild but pervading bigotry coded as humour, and the paper-thin female characters – have aged as noticeably as the film’s two leads.
By now, the self-proclaimed “bad boys”, Miami PD Detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence), might actually be getting too old for their current line of work. Marcus has just become a grandfather and – though Mike professes a desire to chase down bad guys until his age is pushing triple-figures – he’s not as bulletproof as he once was.
To wit, while the precinct is out celebrating the birth of Marcus’ grandson, Mike takes four slugs to the chest from a motorbike-riding assassin, in what appears to be a targeted drive-by shooting. Mike miraculously survives, and I don’t use the word “miraculously” hyperbolically; Marcus attributes Mike pulling through to the tearful bargain he strikes with God while praying in the hospital chapel. The deal? If God spares Mike, Marcus will renounce violence forever.
Cut to six months later and our heroes are markedly different men. While Marcus has retired from active duty (while proving that some former cops have a hard time adapting to civilian life), Mike wants revenge on his still-unidentified attacker. Despite regular rebuffs from their Captain (Joe Pantoliano, cementing himself as the unsung MVP of the trilogy), Mike’s persistence sees him brought onto the taskforce charged with hunting his would-be killer as a consultant.
Said taskforce is the technology-heavy AMMO, or Advanced Miami Metro Operations, run by Mike’s beautiful ex-girlfriend Rita (Paola Núñez) and staffed by a handful of digital natives that double as backup in the odd firefight: Kelly (Vanessa Hudgens), Dorn (Alexander Ludwig) and Rafe (Charles Melton). Throughout their investigation, Mike and AMMO are playing catch-up with the audience, as we’re given the shooter’s backstory from the outset of Chris Bremner, Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan’s screenplay. The young man responsible is Armando (Jacob Scipio), whose mother is Isabel Aretas (Kate del Castillo), the widow of a cartel leader who raised her son as a killing machine to serve in her quest for revenge against Mike.
While the movie takes a misguiding stab at adding some emotional weight beyond the staple Mike-Marcus bromance [look for a paternity-related twist along the lines of ‘Blade Runner 2049’ but without any genuine sentiment and more Martin Lawrence cracking wise (and crass)], the focus is squarely on the titular bad boys. Indeed, while Will Smith tries to inject Mike’s unusual twist on the standard “coming to terms with aging” arc with some capital-A acting (let’s not forget that Smith has two Oscar nominations to his name!), it’s Lawrence’s non-stop mugging that reminds us that what we’re seeing is meant to be an action-comedy, hooting his lungs out over the top of every potentially emotional beat.
Though succumbing somewhat to Smith’s attempts to elevate the series’ tone, Belgian directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah deliver proficiently on the entertainment front, turning in their best approximation of franchise godfather Michael Bay’s characteristic directorial style, replete with fast cutting and frames filled with dynamic movement. Some of their action scenes are cool, like a car chase in which Mike and Marcus commandeer a motorcycle and weaponised sidecar respectively, while others might even claim to reach Bay-like levels of outlandishness, especially anything physical that Mike apparently does mere months after recovering from a major internal injury.
But despite the directors’ best efforts, nothing they mount quite approaches the balletic madness of Bay, that oft mimicked but rarely equalled level of pure blockbuster excess known as “Bayhem”, which arguably reached its zenith in ‘Bad Boys II’. Though Bay makes an onscreen cameo as if to give the movie his blessing, he must have kept some of his proprietary tricks hidden up his sleeve. Maybe it’s the ready supply of cheap CGI that they employ to provide the fire that lights up the climactic showdown, or maybe it’s that Dan Lebental and Peter McNulty’s energetic editing seems to create more confusion that clarity (a diabolically difficult balancing act when cutting together such a swathe of coverage, and one that Bay himself often struggles with). Whatever it is, ‘Bad Boys For Life’ ends up feeling a little less truly wild than its forebears.
The film even tries to one up the infamous closing invasion of Cuba from ‘Bad Boys II’, setting its final assault on the villain’s lair on Mexican soil. But Mike and Marcus’ flagrant disregard for geopolitical boundaries barely seems to matter to the narrative now, which fails to even point out their contravention of dozens of laws and treaties (arguably a statement on American foreign affairs), so it doesn’t feel as outlandish or as “bad” as it once did. Maybe it’s this changed world in which the film is set and into which it’s released that makes its stratospheric levels of testosterone register uneasily. Though the bad boys’ way of saving the day still works, maybe this new day and age is demanding something different.
There’s a disconnect at the centre of ‘Bad Boys For Life’ that grates against its ostensible entertainment factor. On one hand, there’s Mike’s surprising maturity, as the film tries to imbue him with a weighty backstory and encourage emotional investment in a franchise that was previously about dumb jokes and blowing things up. But on the other hand, there’s Marcus, still making crass gags and bringing the tone down as required. The lead duo’s faces and bodies show the 17 years that have passed since Mike and Marcus last rode together, and the passing of time is reflected in the script too. Perhaps it was a recognition that the franchise as it was first conceived might not have a comfortable place in 2020 that necessitated change, but it’s not one that the movie commits to wholeheartedly. With a fourth film now in the works, aligning the characters and the values that they represent will be the key to nailing once more what a ‘Bad Boys’ movie is. To paraphrase Mike and Marcus’ mantra, if they don’t ride together, then they might die together alongside the franchise.
Callum Ryan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
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