‘Bad Boys for Life’ offers a few laughs and a tired story
The shots of Miami. The thumping music. The speeding cars.
The “Bad Boys” are back.
“Bad Boys for Life” — the third entry in the uninspired but popular action-comedy franchise launched 25 years ago with “Bad Boys” and continued in 2003 with somewhat-better “Bad Boys II” — begins with narcotics detective Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) screaming his sports car through the city streets and partner Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) complaining about how reckless Mike is being … before prodding him to go faster.
Are they chasing a drug lord in another car, or perhaps a henchman in a boat cutting through the water parallel to the shoreway?
Whatever it is, it must be important, as Mike soon takes his gorgeous 992-Generation Porsche through the sand of one of Miami’s crowded beaches.
“Sorry, rich white people!” Mike exclaims.
“We’re not just black — we’re cops, too!” Marcus adds. “We’ll pull ourselves over later.”
When they arrive at their destination — and after Marcus slams the car’s passenger-side door into a hydrant, enraging his fond-of-nice-things partner — we meet Marcus’ new grandson, named after him.
That’s right: Like the rest of us, the Bad Boys have gotten older.
Yet while Marcus can’t hold back tears at the hospital around the child, Mike declines an invitation to even hold the boy.
Marcus may be making noises about retirement — again — but Mike, still suave and ultra-confident, wants to keep going after the bad guys and rocking the streets.
Fate may have other ideas.
Little does Mike know he’s the target of a revenge plot hatched by a witchcraft-practicing Mexican criminal with whom Mike has a past, Isabel (Kate Del Castillo), who has dispatched her fierce son, Armando (Jacob Scipio), to
Miami to end Mike’s life.
When Armando arrives on the scene of a footrace Mike and Marcus are having along Ocean Drive to determine whether they’ll retire — and running it in the full view of police colleagues who include their long-suffering boss, Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano, “Memento”) — he changes the equation in a dramatic way.
The story that unfolds from there also involves a new modern police unit called AMMO (Advanced Miami Metro Operations), led by one of Mike’s exes, Rita (Paola Nunez, “Amor En Custodia”), who still cares about him. While a young team member, Kelly (Vanessa Hudgens, “Spring Breakers”), looks upon Mike with great reverence, the same can’t be said for Rafe (Charles Melton, “The Sun Is Also a
Star”), a young, brash former DEA agent who sees Mike as a dinosaur. (And for you “Vikings” fans out there, the imposing Alexander Ludwig is fun as a former bouncer who’s found his new calling as AMMO’s tech expert.)
To be fair to Rafe, the old-school Mike sees little value in this high-tech police work practiced by AMMO and would prefer to keep cracking skulls.
Marcus, meanwhile, is doing his best to stay away from danger, wanting to remain among the living so he can watch his
grandson grow up, even if that means enduring Mike changing his contact name to “Quitter” in his phone.
Not one of the most dynamic duos to ever grace the screen, Smith (“Gemini Man,” “Concussion”) and Lawrence (“Blue Streak,” “Big Momma’s House”) nonetheless share an undeniable chemistry a quarter of a century after first working together. Smith plays cocky-but-aging well, and Lawrence squeezes more laughs out of silly moments than seems doable.
While the leading men return, Michael Bay, the director of the first two “Bad Boys,” is MIA for “Life.” That’s a mixed bag; gone is Bay’s particular
brand of stylish action sequences, but so is his almost complete inability to handle character.
As a result, it’s never been quite so pleasant to spend time with Mike and Marcus — there’s even a moment of, dare we say, convincing emotion in this movie — but the gunfights and explosions aren’t quite so boomy.
Working from a generally lazy screenplay by Chris Bremner and Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan — with the story credited to Craig and Carnahan — are Moroccan-born Belgian filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who count the “Bad Boys” movies among their major influences.
All of these directors and writers help to contribute to what is a perfectly pleasant, if ultimately ordinary, actioncomedy romp for the first of its two hours. However, like so many movies in its genre, “Bad Boys for Life” grows less and less interesting as it becomes more and more plotty and raises its emotional stakes.
The movie’s production notes lean into the idea that this is “one last ride” for Mike and Marcus, but, unsurprisingly, the movie leaves open the possibility of a fourth flick. (Then again, wouldn’t the powers that be want to save this movie’s title to call that one “Bad Boys 4 Life”? Well, we digress.)
For now, the Bad Boys are back for round three. They’re not quite so bad, and they’re not remotely boys at this point, but they’re still good for a few laughs and gunshot wounds.