Bad Boys for Life
Directors - Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah
Writers - Chris Bremner, Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan
Starring - Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Paola Nunez, Joe Pantoliano
"Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present" - Midnight in Paris
There is perhaps no more powerful force in the entertainment industry than nostalgia. It so rarely fails to turn a profit that the rare times it does are noteworthy (i.e. Independence Day: Resurgence). It comes as no surprise that Hollywood would make a third Bad Boys movie 17 years after the second.
There's just one thing about nostalgia. Oftentimes it fails to discriminate between what was good about an era and what was bad. Through the celebration of their 50th anniversary the Vancouver Canucks are bringing back every jersey worn by the team throughout the years. Naturally there are strong nostalgic feelings towards the colours of the 90s and they are great looking jerseys but there has also been nostalgia to the flying V jerseys of the 80s, by any measure one of the worst jerseys any team of any sport has worn. The Bad Boys films are the flying V jerseys of the late 90s-early 00s and it would be better if we left those films in the past where they belonged.
The last movie in the Bad Boys franchise came out 17 years ago in 2003. The macho hyper-violent cop characters portrayed by Will Smith and Martin Lawrence fit well in the American society of the time, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 when cops, and other first responders, were unquestioned heroes with pure motives and the bad guys were faceless thugs deserving of their fates. The invasion of Cuba in the third act of Bad Boys II could only have been acceptable in an America that was invading multiple countries in the name of policing the world.
These attitudes were very short lived in the popular consciousness and the pop culture world reflected the shifting times. The Wire explored the moral complexities of the war on drugs with as much thought as care as Michael Bay put into explosions. Team America: World Police parodied the idea that the United States should be policing the world. The Obama years saw attempts to step back from the jingoism of the Bush era United States and also gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Portraying police officers is much different thing in 2020 than it was in 2003. While it may have been acceptable, or even encouraged, to portray cops as unstoppable tough guys who don't have time for warrants or due process as long as they shoot the right bad guys, that is a much more difficult vision to portray in today's climate. Nearly every scene of police action in Bad Boys for Life is of morally objectionable activity. The Miami Police Department of the film engages in warrantless surveillance, torture, murder, and break-and-enter among other activities. In case you are wondering, yes they do cross international borders in this film for the climax.
Bad Boys for Life could have displayed any amount of self-awareness towards the actions of its police but beyond some half-hearted shrugs and weak threats towards the main characters nothing stands in the way of this film portraying its police as awesome bad-ass take-no-prisoners motherfuckers who shoot first and ask questions later.
I know, I hear you, you defenders of the film who are saying it has displayed growth from its predecessor by dropping nearly all the gay panic content from the first entries. This film even has a scene wherein Martin Lawrence tenderly dyes Will Smith's goatee while the later is recovering from gun shot wounds in the hospital. Bad Boys II would never have done that. The regressive attitudes towards homosexuality displayed in the original films was never acceptable and to remove it is an act of basic decency and should not warrant praise.
Bad Boys for Life sees hot shot cops Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence) contemplating their careers after 25 years of being "Bad Boys". Marcus, newly a grandfather, is contemplating retirement while Mike wants to continue to live like he's 20, chasing down bad guys in the streets and a series of empty hookups. A mysterious woman (Kate del Castillo) breaks out of prison in Mexico and sends her son (Jacob Scipio) to Miami on a revenge mission to take back the city for their family cartel. He shoots Mike sending him to intensive care and Marcus to retirement.
While Mike is recovering the ever reliable Captain of the Miami Police (Pantoliano) assigns the case of his shooting to the newly formed AMMO squad headed up by Rita (Nunez), Mike ex-girlfriend. When Mike gets out of his wheelchair he finds the AMMO investigation is not torturing enough people for his liking so he does some vigilante torturing until the captain puts him on AMMO so he can bring his bad ass motherfucker energy to the team. Eventually he gets Marcus out of retirement and teaches the techy, youth of AMMO how to be bad ass cops as they head to Mexico to police the world. It's like Sicario if Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin were good guys (which may have been the Sicario sequel, I never saw that).
Missing from the director's chair is Michael Bay, as he has been replaced by Belgian duo Adil & Bilall, making their first Hollywood film after several Belgian films and some television work, (side note: their next will be Beverly Hills Cop 4 because why the fuck not make a new one of those too) who seem to be hired because they know all of the Michael Bay tricks. Never stop moving the camera, never stop moving the action, never stop cutting. While it would be a large stretch to call Bay's direction of the original Bad Boys films good, it is certainly stylish and energetic. Adil & Bilall attempt to bring all of the energy for the film through their aping of Michael Bay which makes most everything fall flat.
I will point out the one stylish thing they did was completely tilt the camera at one point during the climax but that just made me think of when the camera spins around during Rebel Wilson's song in Cats so I don't think I can give them credit for it. It's also not good and just disorienting for no reason.
This bland sub-Bay filmmaking is most egregious in the climax when the film leaves sunny Miami for a dark, rundown Mexican hotel for a darkly lit gunfight and helicopter explosion. At least the fire from the explosion brought some light to final part of the climax. When the "heroes" invaded Cuba at least Michael Bay kept it in the bright sunlight so everybody could see exactly how he was trying to recreate the shantytown chase in Police Story but doing a terrible job of it.
Bad Boys for Life plays exactly like a sequel nobody asked for and nobody wanted. The only update it makes on Bad Boys II is a swapping out of gay panic for heaping doses of "I'm too old for this shit" and an unwillingness to grow up. It lacks the depth and self awareness necessary to sell itself as anything other than an ode to a past seen entirely through rose coloured glasses. If the Trump era has you pining for the halcyon days of George W Bush in earnest, this might be the movie for you. If you are a functional human being, avoid it at all costs.
Schurmann Score - 1/10
This review is brought to you by Patrick Swadden, may he die a terrible death on this, his birthday.
There is perhaps no more powerful force in the entertainment industry than nostalgia. It so rarely fails to turn a profit that the rare times it does are noteworthy (i.e. Independence Day: Resurgence). It comes as no surprise that Hollywood would make a third Bad Boys movie 17 years after the second.
There's just one thing about nostalgia. Oftentimes it fails to discriminate between what was good about an era and what was bad. Through the celebration of their 50th anniversary the Vancouver Canucks are bringing back every jersey worn by the team throughout the years. Naturally there are strong nostalgic feelings towards the colours of the 90s and they are great looking jerseys but there has also been nostalgia to the flying V jerseys of the 80s, by any measure one of the worst jerseys any team of any sport has worn. The Bad Boys films are the flying V jerseys of the late 90s-early 00s and it would be better if we left those films in the past where they belonged.
The last movie in the Bad Boys franchise came out 17 years ago in 2003. The macho hyper-violent cop characters portrayed by Will Smith and Martin Lawrence fit well in the American society of the time, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 when cops, and other first responders, were unquestioned heroes with pure motives and the bad guys were faceless thugs deserving of their fates. The invasion of Cuba in the third act of Bad Boys II could only have been acceptable in an America that was invading multiple countries in the name of policing the world.
These attitudes were very short lived in the popular consciousness and the pop culture world reflected the shifting times. The Wire explored the moral complexities of the war on drugs with as much thought as care as Michael Bay put into explosions. Team America: World Police parodied the idea that the United States should be policing the world. The Obama years saw attempts to step back from the jingoism of the Bush era United States and also gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Portraying police officers is much different thing in 2020 than it was in 2003. While it may have been acceptable, or even encouraged, to portray cops as unstoppable tough guys who don't have time for warrants or due process as long as they shoot the right bad guys, that is a much more difficult vision to portray in today's climate. Nearly every scene of police action in Bad Boys for Life is of morally objectionable activity. The Miami Police Department of the film engages in warrantless surveillance, torture, murder, and break-and-enter among other activities. In case you are wondering, yes they do cross international borders in this film for the climax.
Bad Boys for Life could have displayed any amount of self-awareness towards the actions of its police but beyond some half-hearted shrugs and weak threats towards the main characters nothing stands in the way of this film portraying its police as awesome bad-ass take-no-prisoners motherfuckers who shoot first and ask questions later.
I know, I hear you, you defenders of the film who are saying it has displayed growth from its predecessor by dropping nearly all the gay panic content from the first entries. This film even has a scene wherein Martin Lawrence tenderly dyes Will Smith's goatee while the later is recovering from gun shot wounds in the hospital. Bad Boys II would never have done that. The regressive attitudes towards homosexuality displayed in the original films was never acceptable and to remove it is an act of basic decency and should not warrant praise.
Bad Boys for Life sees hot shot cops Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence) contemplating their careers after 25 years of being "Bad Boys". Marcus, newly a grandfather, is contemplating retirement while Mike wants to continue to live like he's 20, chasing down bad guys in the streets and a series of empty hookups. A mysterious woman (Kate del Castillo) breaks out of prison in Mexico and sends her son (Jacob Scipio) to Miami on a revenge mission to take back the city for their family cartel. He shoots Mike sending him to intensive care and Marcus to retirement.
While Mike is recovering the ever reliable Captain of the Miami Police (Pantoliano) assigns the case of his shooting to the newly formed AMMO squad headed up by Rita (Nunez), Mike ex-girlfriend. When Mike gets out of his wheelchair he finds the AMMO investigation is not torturing enough people for his liking so he does some vigilante torturing until the captain puts him on AMMO so he can bring his bad ass motherfucker energy to the team. Eventually he gets Marcus out of retirement and teaches the techy, youth of AMMO how to be bad ass cops as they head to Mexico to police the world. It's like Sicario if Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin were good guys (which may have been the Sicario sequel, I never saw that).
Missing from the director's chair is Michael Bay, as he has been replaced by Belgian duo Adil & Bilall, making their first Hollywood film after several Belgian films and some television work, (side note: their next will be Beverly Hills Cop 4 because why the fuck not make a new one of those too) who seem to be hired because they know all of the Michael Bay tricks. Never stop moving the camera, never stop moving the action, never stop cutting. While it would be a large stretch to call Bay's direction of the original Bad Boys films good, it is certainly stylish and energetic. Adil & Bilall attempt to bring all of the energy for the film through their aping of Michael Bay which makes most everything fall flat.
I will point out the one stylish thing they did was completely tilt the camera at one point during the climax but that just made me think of when the camera spins around during Rebel Wilson's song in Cats so I don't think I can give them credit for it. It's also not good and just disorienting for no reason.
This bland sub-Bay filmmaking is most egregious in the climax when the film leaves sunny Miami for a dark, rundown Mexican hotel for a darkly lit gunfight and helicopter explosion. At least the fire from the explosion brought some light to final part of the climax. When the "heroes" invaded Cuba at least Michael Bay kept it in the bright sunlight so everybody could see exactly how he was trying to recreate the shantytown chase in Police Story but doing a terrible job of it.
Bad Boys for Life plays exactly like a sequel nobody asked for and nobody wanted. The only update it makes on Bad Boys II is a swapping out of gay panic for heaping doses of "I'm too old for this shit" and an unwillingness to grow up. It lacks the depth and self awareness necessary to sell itself as anything other than an ode to a past seen entirely through rose coloured glasses. If the Trump era has you pining for the halcyon days of George W Bush in earnest, this might be the movie for you. If you are a functional human being, avoid it at all costs.
Schurmann Score - 1/10
This review is brought to you by Patrick Swadden, may he die a terrible death on this, his birthday.
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