Bad Boys For Life

DIRECTORS ADIL El Arbi and Bilall Fallah — aka Adil & Bilall — on breathing life back into the franchise.

START WITH A BANG

Coming almost two decades after Bad Boys II, Belgian directors Adil & Bilall had to make a statement early on with Bad Boys For Life that this was not going to be the same old, same old. They accomplish that mission in shocking fashion about ten minutes in, when the film’s bad guy, Armando (British actor Jacob Scipio), guns down Will Smith’s seemingly indestructible ‘Bulletproof’ Mike Lowrey in the street. Though Mike eventually recovers, it’s a sign that Bad Boys For Life is going to dig a little beneath the surface and ask questions of its heroes’ ‘ride together, die together’ mentality. “In the movies we did in Belgium, we delved deep into thematics and characters,” says Adil. “When we were discussing the movie with Will, his whole thing was that it needed to have an arc, and say something about what it was like to be older. The theme of the movie is ‘grow or die’. That made it a more interesting project for us.”

MICHAEL BAY-MEO

In one of the film’s funniest gags, Michael Bay — the director of the first two Bad Boys movies — shows up, out of the blue, to perform a toast at the wedding of Marcus’ (Martin Lawrence) daughter. And so, naturally, Adil & Bilall go Full Michael Bay and have the camera do a couple of 360s around him. The only thing missing is the wedding cake exploding. “A lot of the crew had worked with Michael Bay, and were telling us stories that he yelled a lot,” laughs Bilall. “So me and Adil — especially Adil — were super-scared.

But he was super-nice. When we said, ‘Action,’ it was like he was directing his own shot. And at the end of the day he said to me, ‘Don’t fuck up my baby!’” They didn’t.

KITCHEN NIGHTMARE

At that same wedding, Mike and Marcus have a heated conversation about Mike’s desire for revenge, forcing the bad boys to (briefly) go their separate ways. It’s a further distillation of Adil & Bilall’s belief that the movie shouldn’t shy away from the thorny issue of its heroes’ age. And with that comes added vulnerability. “How do you remain Mike Lowrey when you’re older than before, and you’ve been shot, and you’re weaker?” asks Adil. “Marcus knows that if Mike continues like this, someone is going to die. That conflict is so intense. It was one of my favourite scenes.”

THAT’S PANTS

“We wanted to have that moment as unexpected as possible,” says Bilall of the

shocking sequence in which Joe Pantoliano’s Captain Howard is brutally killed, in the middle of shooting the breeze with Mike, by a bullet from Armando’s sniper rifle. The directors were aware that bumping off a fanfavourite character was a big move. “We didn’t want to revel in it, or put music on it. What we really liked about that is you see Captain Howard as a father towards Mike, and then that’s where his story ends,” says Bilall. How did Pantoliano take the news? “He was always talking to the screenwriters and us — ‘Maybe you can put me in the next movie still!’” he laughs. “‘I can come back as a ghost!’” adds Adil. Sorry, Joey Pants, but there’s no coming back from this.

BLOODY EL FUEGO!

At the end of a sprawling, property-destroying chase sequence that takes in a brief Aardman-inspired sojourn for Mike and Marcus in a motorcycle and sidecar (“We studied Wallace and Gromit!” chuckles Adil), the truth is revealed: Armando is actually Mike’s son. When Mike realises this, he’s hanging on for grim life, looking into Armando’s eyes as this cold-blooded killer says, ‘Hasta el fuego,’ a phrase only Mike and his former lover, drug kingpin Isabel (Kate del Castillo), understand. And if that framing looks familiar to you, it should. “Our inspiration for that was The Lion King, when Scar is over Mufasa,” says Adil. Two animated references in the same Bad Boys movie? Expect a Catbus to show up in Bad Boys 4.

BAD BOYS 4 LIFE

In a final showdown in Mexico, all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed. Henchmen are dispatched, Armando finally learns that Mike is his dad and, after a bruising fight between the two, decides to repent for his many, many sins. And Isabel is finally dispatched — but not, unusually for a movie like this, by Mike and Marcus. Instead, team leader Rita (Paola Núñez) does the deed. “There was never a version where Mike or Marcus killed the bad guys,” reveals Adil. “We tried to do something a little more fresh and new. The expected thing would be Mike or Marcus, or them together, killing the bad guy in the end, but there was something very refreshing in having the woman saving the bad boys.”

VISITING TIME

“There are a lot of versions of the ending,” laughs Adil. In one, Isabel lived. In another, both she and Armando survived. In another... you get the drift. Eventually, though, they settled on a post-credits sting of sorts, in which Mike visits Armando in one of those spacious and sinisterly lit jails that only exist in movies, and recruits his son for a future assignment. Will audiences accept Armando, who has blood aplenty on his hands, on the side of the angels in Bad Boys 4? “Test audiences kept telling us how likeable he was, even though he was a bad guy,” says Adil. “And when we did some reshoots, we sprinkled some more Armando here and there.”

BAD BOYS FOR LIFE IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD