Bad Boys for Life

Bad Boys for Life is a film that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did. Even when I heard about the positive reception of the film, I didn’t expect to like it, nor did I think I’d be even remotely interested in seeing what comes next. Yet, here we are. Sometimes, life is surprising.

Anyway, we pick up seventeen years after the events of Bad Boys II, with detectives Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence), the latter of whom is considering retiring after witnessing the birth of his grandson. Suddenly though, Mike becomes a victim of an attempted assassination, so he takes it upon himself to find out who wants him dead while Marcus tries out the retired life. This obviously doesn’t last long, though, as Marcus gets roped back into the fray and the two become Bad Boys again, along with the help of a new law enforcement division called AMMO, a group of younger, tech-savvy cops.

If there’s anything this film demonstrates, it’s how surprisingly well Smith and Lawrence still work together after 25 years. I mean, Smith could pull off the smooth operator schtick in his sleep by this point, but Lawrence definitely makes a comeback in this role, demonstrating that he’s still got his comedic chops after multiple years of not really showing up in much of anything worth noting.

What’s even more surprising though is how well Smith and Lawrence work with the AMMO team, which is comprised of Paola Nunez as the leader, Vanessa Hudgens as the more action-oriented member, Alexander Ludwig (hey, it’s always nice to see him) as the buff tech geek with a past, and Charles Melton as the cocky one. Sure, it’d be easy to just turn this setup into a routine where the tech-savvy millennials are shown to be inadequate in comparison to the rough-and-tumble older generation, and while there are some minor jokes about it here and there, the film doesn’t really go that direction, instead showing the older and newer generations successfully working together. It results in some fun camaraderie and I hope we get to see more of them together in the future.

The action is a whole lot of fun as well. This time instead of Michael Bay in the chair, we have Belgian-Moroccan filmmaking duo Adil & Bilall, and they show they are more than capable of handling bombastic action scenes like these ones. Sure, they may not carry the same distinctive, over-the-top, Bay-esque style that made the previous Bad Boys films so interesting, but they’ve got a good style all their own; I can definitely see why they were hired to direct the upcoming Beverly Hills Cop 4.

If I do have one problem with the film, it’s that sometimes Martin Lawrence’s comedic ramblings undercut the drama/suspense that some scenes were going for, but honestly, that was the only real gripe that came with the film.

All in all, this was good. Not great, but it served its purpose in demonstrating there’s still a lot of fun to be had in this franchise.

So, yeah, definitely go see it. Let’s see where they go next with Bad Boys 4.