Running on Fumes

Look, I enjoy the Bad Boys movies as much as the next person. They’re fairly dumb, action-comedies that, in their heyday, were elevated by Michael Bay’s over-the-top sensibilities and his, quite frankly, artistic vision. Say what you will about Michael Bay but the man has an eye for making very pretty, very spectacular shots and then having things blow up in them. The first two Bad Boys movies succeeded because Bay put all of his artistic vision into those films, creating massive action spectacles with two great comedy actors at the center.

In fact, even though the films star Will Smith and Martin Lawrence (with, for a time, Lawrence getting top billing on the films until Smith became the bigger star), I wouldn’t call them vehicles for the actors. At least, not the first two. Bad Boys and Bad Boys II are Michael Bay vehicles. For all the amusing jokes, for all the fun of seeing these two actors in these films, it was Michael Bay’s influence that turned the movies into blockbusters. Without his specific eye for action, the franchise wouldn’t be where it is now.

Of course, Bay hasn’t been directly involved in the latter films of the franchise, only cameoing in tiny roles in 2020’s legacy three-quel Bad Boys for Life and again here in the fourth entry, Bad Boys: Ride or Die. And you can’t blame the guy; whether because he was just too busy doing other projects, or simply because he didn’t want the stink of these later sequels on his resumeBay has let the directing duo of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah take the reins of the series into the future. Unlike Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, who need these films to boost their careers (Smith after that Oscar slap, and Lawrence simply because he’s not doing anything else once people got bored of his Big Momma character), Bay is doing just fine. This latest film, though… not so much.

For this fourth installment we find Miami PD Detective Mike Lowrey (Smith) on a desperate drive with his partner, Marcus Burnett (Lawrence), as they head to Lowrey’s wedding as he’s marrying his physical therapist (he was shot, and nearly died, in the previous film), Christine (Melanie Liburd). At the wedding, though, Burnett has a heart attack and nearly dies. As he’s floating in the great beyond, he gets a visit from the deceased Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano), who warns Burnett of a coming storm, one that could bring real danger to both Burnett and Lowrey’s lives.

A couple of weeks later, once Burnett is alive and recovered, the news drops that Captain Howard was, apparently, dirty and working for the cartels. This is a lie, of course, as shady agents of the cartels are trying to smear the dead man’s name to close the case and draw attention away from the people they really have working for them. This whole scheme is headed by former U.S. Army Ranger James McGrath (Eric Dane) and his team of former special ops agents, and once he catches wind that Lowrey and Burnett are on the case, he works to smear them as well. This puts them on the run, forced to flee both law enforcement and the cartel’s agents, so they can clear their names as well as the reputation of their former captain.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is overstuffed to the point of breaking. I managed to summarize the plot well enough above, but there was so much I had to leave out to get there. Side plots, side characters, whole sections that don’t contribute to the overall story but pad out the film to its nearly two-hour runtime. There’s a lot going on in this fourth Bad Boys film, with the movie working to reference (almost) everyone that came before and make space for (almost) every character and storyline that’s been brewing across the previous three films.

(I say almost because there’s absolutely no mention of Gabriel Union’s Syd Burnett in this film, despite her having received two seasons of her own show, L.A.’s Finest, just a few years back. It’s a notable exception and the one time the film seems to show any restraint when it comes to paring back on its stories and characters.)

Watching this new Bad Boys film was tiring. It takes an hour to get where it’s going, to finally put the guys on the run and on their mission to clear their names, because it has so many characters it has to reintroduce, so many previous story threads it has to pull back in and remind the viewers about. It honestly felt less like a Bad Boys movie than a Fast and Furious film, with it’s bloated cast of characters (many of whom end up getting action sequences), and heavy emphasis on “family”. I guess if you’re going to steal ideas from any franchise, it doesn’t hurt to take from a multi-billion dollar one, but in the process this film loses so much of the franchise’s identity that it doesn’t really operate like a Bad Boys film at all.

At its core, what we want from one of these movies is the comedy wisecracking of the two leads while massive explosions and stupid action go off all around them. That’s what made the first two films work so well, and it seemed like the direction duo of Adil & Bilall understood that. While their previous effort in the franchise, Bad Boys For Life, was a weaker version of the Bay formula, it still had the explosions and the action. They did a moderate copy that worked well enough. It wasn’t as good, but then few people can outdo Bay at his own game. But this four-quel simply doesn’t have that spark, that joy, that over-the-top glee, that a Bad Boys film needs. It’s simply lacking.

There are honestly only two decent action sequences of note in the film. One is a home invasion at Burnett’s place, where is Marines-trained son-in-law, Reggie Norman (Dennis McDonald), takes on 15 dudes and absolutely lays waste to everyone trying to kidnap Marcus’s family. It’s a great bit of action, with Reggie getting showcased as an absolute force of nature when called upon. But it’s also notable because it doesn’t involve the main leads in the action, putting them behind cameras to watch the whole thing while Reggie does all the work.

The second decent bit of action comes at the end, when the whole crew – Marcus and Mike along with (from the previous film) AMMO members Dorn (Alexander Ludwig) and Kelly (Vanessa Hudgens), plus Mike’s own convicted criminal son Armando (Jacob Scipio), all storm the abandoned water park where McGrath and his team have their hostages, and the carnage flies. There’s explosions all over the place, bullets flying everywhere, a lot of weird camera tricks and flying angles… it’s a lot. I dunno that I’d necessarily call it great action, but there are moments that feel pretty propulsive and it was, generally speaking, a decent action sequence.

There are other action moments in the film – a chase sequence here, a plane crash there – but they aren’t anywhere near as interesting or investing as these moments. In large part that’s because, if we’re being honest, these lesser moments are focused solely on Lowrey and Burnett and the two actors, Smith and Lawrence, just aren’t able to carry action anymore. As I mentioned, the good action in this film features younger characters (and actors) picking up the slack and charging into battle. But when it’s just Smith and Lawrence, it’s pretty clear the directors are having to work the movie magic around these two guys to try and sell that they’re action heroes. The film strains as much as its senior-citizen leads.

This, I think, leads back to that vibe that we’re seeing less of a Bad Boys direction for the franchise and something closer to Fast and Furious. At a certain point these characters have to retire and let the next generation take over (that is, if Sony wants to keep trying to milk the franchise for all its worth). That’s why we get so many characters returning here, so many different threads and relationships and reminders of who is in this franchise and who can be relied upon to carry scenes. Any one of these characters could get spun off into their own films, or could be promoted maybe to become the new leads eventually? The third and fourth films both ended up being made for around $100 Mil and each brought in $400-plus Mil at the Box Office. It’s a series that people still want to see, currently, and someone has to carry it into the future.

What this film illustrates, more than anything, is that it won’t be Smith and Lawrence. They lack the drive, the energy, and the means to carry these films forward. Time comes for everyone and these two are really starting to wear out. This film creaks whenever it focuses on them (and it has to focus on them a lot as, still, this is their movie), leaving it feeling as tired and listless as the duo at the center. We may come to a point where the Bad Boys films continue on without the central “boys” in the lead. And if this film is any indication, that time could be coming real quick.