This is pure excellence in action-comedy.
Firstly I wasn’t expecting to like this. I was saying things like “they’re too old” and “it’s gone on too long” and “we don’t need another one.” No-one was as surprised as me at how much I enjoyed it. And as with the last Bad Boys (2010), I just don’t really want to do a spoilery recount. But I feel it needs some key sell point explanation.
But I will tell you it is whack and I loved its whackness.
There is a genius event that happens very early on in the film that completely inverts the relationship between steady guy Marcus (Martin Lawrence) and wild child Mike Lowrey (Will Smith). And seeing these two switch roles is great! It made everything about their relationship as fresh as a past life. Watching Marcus charge around and Mike try to play catch up was endlessly fun – this is 100% Martin Lawrence’s time to shine.
The premise of the film is their old, dead cop boss is posthumously framed for drug-cartel insider trading. And thus begins a sort of off the books investigation to clear his name and uncover a mole. I’d say it borrows quite a bit from the structure of games, with knowledge gatekeepers, levels and an even some epic first person shooter stuff.
The action keeps coming. The pacing is really good – there is never long enough to get bored between fights or other action sequences. There are some new and exciting things to see. I love new and exciting things to see! It’s a tidy two hours of action packed goodness.
It’s set in Miami, which is where Bad Boys does business. It’s all beachy and glossy and what not. As Will Smith always says, “take me to Miami.”
There’s a Michael Bay cameo. After all, Bay invented Bad Boys, and or Will Smith the movie star. They both tell the same story from what I can tell.
Any way the Bay cameo is great, it’s one of those cameos where even if you don’t know who he is, the way it’s cut makes you feel you should recognise them. Speaking of directors, he isn’t it for this one.
It’s directed by Belgium duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah and they do a rad job. They quite successfully capture the essence of Bayhem in this, but with their own twists. There is a super classic spinshot. But also an epic new 3D spinshot that I was well wowed by. It’s an exploding bowl of jellybeans worth of kinetic camera work. If you find the taste of zinging camera like a black jellybean… well…. I mean I love both. The camera is a living beast in this. All the better to take in literally every angle of the action.
I often say I’d love to breed a perfect director, which for me would be somewhere between the bombastic gloss of Michael Bay and the surreal liminescence of Nicholas Winding Refn. And this directing pair seems to come close, although with the comedic sensibility of David Leitch, which I’m not complaining about.
Sets are great. I love a creative set and this does multiple creative sets. Visually pleasing. Many fun gags. Great character dynamics.
Again, I didn’t expect to love it this much, and I do.
J* gives it 4 stars.
PS. That Reggie.
Jstar Reviews 