Blue thunder
Two barrels of Bayhem... 1995/2003 OUT NOW BD
BAD BOYS I & II: 20TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION 15
The eight years between the first Bad Boys and the second were important ones for its stars and director. Will Smith followed his ice-cool turn as guntoting Miami copper Mike Lowrey with Independence Day, two Men In Blacks and an Oscar nod for Ali, while Michael Bay cemented his status as Hollywood’s new action supremo with The Rock and Armageddon. Sure, both suffered flops in the interim: Wild Wild West in Smith’s case, Pearl Harbor in Bay’s. Neither, however, were so crushing for BB II to serve in any way as a life raft.
For Martin Lawrence, though, that is precisely what it was after an eight-year wilderness full of flops ( Black Knight, National Security), numerous legal and health-related troubles and just one bona fide hit ( Big Momma’s House). Inevitably, then, this 20th anniversary reissue has a larger resonance than just a hedonistic celebration of Will power and Bayhem. It is also a cautionary tale on the fickle nature of an industry that can cast out as quickly as it embraces – a lesson both Smith and Bay have had reason to reflect on in the dozen years since the Bad Boys sequel detonated in cinemas.
It’s true, too, that putting the Boys back to back presents a handy object lesson in the perils of blockbuster franchise-forming. The ’95 original ( for all its flaws, at least had freshness on its side, the then-novelty of watching two relatively unknown black stars headlining a movie being matched by the visceral thrill of a kinetic directing style that gave both John Woo and Tony Scott a run for their money. It’s also very funny, thanks to a switcheroo plot device that requires Smith to ape Lawrence’s homebody tetchiness and Martin’s Marcus to approximate Lowrey’s lady-killing prowess. In Téa Leoni, meanwhile, Bad Boys has a female lead who could not only go toe to toe with her male counterparts but also jaw to jaw – this being a rare actioner whose explosions risked being drowned out by its rat-a-tat gabbing.
But fast forward to 2003’s Bad Boys II ( and the recipe has lost some of its flavour. An ugly homophobic tone has crept into Smith and Lawrence’s bad-boyish banter, while the film itself keeps making a point of their ethnicity – not least by having them gatecrash a KKK meeting in the opening few minutes. You can’t fault the spectacle, typified by one high-speed highway chase in which Mike and Marcus have to dodge cars ejected from a hijacked loader. The fact, though, that its shooting required the extensive closure of a vital Miami thoroughfare makes it not so much a crowd-pleasing set-piece as a directorial ego trip – one symptomatic of a double bill whose successes and excesses go together like bullets and bloodshed. Extras BB: › Commentary › Featurette › Music videos BB2: › Deleted scene › Featurette › Production diaries › Music video