Bad Boys 2

Bad Boys 2

Last night I went to see Bad Boys 2. Now, I wasn't a huge fan of the first Bad Boys movie. I saw it when it came out, and while I didn't love it, I did take note of Michael Bay's directing style. Back then it was something a little edgy, and new. He kept the camera moving, panning and roving around the subjects even in quiet, dialogue scenes. It was almost like documentary-style camera work that added a jittery, MTV energy to the movie. That, plus the Hong-Kong-inspired, two-gunning, slo-mo leaping-through-the-air action scenes made me remember Bay's name when he later directed Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery in the Rock. Since then, the style of action shooting which got him noticed with Bad Boys has become pretty typical in Hollywood.

While I enjoyed the style of the movie, I remember thinking that it wasn't as funny as I had expected, considering it starred a pair of TV sitcom stars. There were cute character moments, exchanges like this one: [The pair are driving in Mike Lowrey's (Will Smith) Porsche. Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) can't find a place to put his drink.] Marcus Burnett: You mean, y'all paid, what, $80,000 for this car and you ain't got no damn cup holder?! Mike Lowrey: It's $105,000 and this happens to be one of the fastest production cars on the planet. Zero to sixty in four seconds, sweetie. Limited edition. Marcus Burnett: You damn right it's limited! No cup holder, no back seat. Just a shiny dick with two chairs in it. I guess we the balls just draggin' the fuck along.

But there weren't many all-out laughs, especially from Will Smith, who seemed to be playing the straight man to Martin Lawrence's maddened rants. However the movie holds a special place in my psyche because, while living in Columbus, I picked up a previously-viewed copy. That was during a time when I was spending a lot of time in my room, working on some pretty intensive and time-consuming creative projects. To keep myself company, I would leave the TV on. And since I couldn't stand to have soap operas and daytime talk shows running, I would play movies on my VCR. Of course, I had a video collection of over a thousand movies at that time (conservatively), but I was too wrapped up in my work (a.k.a. lazy) to go downstairs and get a different tape, so I just played my Bad Boys video. Over and over and over. Day after day. So I've had that movie drilled into my subconscious.

Bad Boys came out in 1995 and grossed $65 million domestically (1995 dollars). Bad Boys 2 has been out for 3 weeks and has already grossed $111 million (2003 dollars). So it's doing pretty well. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that they decided to title this movie "Bad Boys 2," which obviously positions itself as a sequel to the original. Considering it's been 8 years since the original came out, and even those who did see it (other than myself) have probably forgotten most of it, I would think they'd be concerned about alienating potential viewers who might think, "I don't care about Bad Boys anymore, why would I want to see Bad Boys 2?" I would expect them to name it something like "Bad Boys For Life," thus referring to the original but also possibly positioning itself as a stand-alone movie. Ultimately, since this is just a buddy cop movie, the audience doesn't really need to have a knowledge of the first movie, despite the fact that they obviously made an effort to bring back many members of the original supporting cast. When we see thickly-bespectacled John Salley as the hacker Fletcher, trying to illegally break into the phone company's computer, we don't need to know that he was in the first movie as a convict whom our heroes had dragged into the office to do some hacking. But if you do remember, then you can enjoy the continuity.

But enough about Bad Boys. Let me tell you about Bad Boys II. BBII (or beebee-aye-aye, as I like to call it) was a summer action flick. In fact, it was trying hard to be the ultimate summer action flick. It had people shooting at each other, it had chase scenes, it had explosions, and it had wisecracks. It had all of those things, and it had a lot of them. The only thing it seemed to be missing was kung-fu wire work, thankfully. The movie was long. It was almost 2 1/2 hours long, which is pretty long for a buddy cop movie. The plot was more convoluted than I expected, but it was still just a framework on which to hang the action set-pieces. It was also funnier than the original. Ultimately, this movie distinguishes itself from other summer-action-type movies with the chemistry and interaction between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence's characters. They bicker, they argue, they rant at each other, sometimes almost seeming to ignore the bad guys around them as they get into their arguments. And that works pretty well. The actors have good chemistry together and play off each other well. They also seem more comfortable in their roles and their interaction than they did 8 years ago. Was some of the humor a bit juvenile or offensive? Sure. But they didn't make any Asian jokes, so what do I care? (There don't seem to be any Asians in Miami, but then there aren't any in Hollywood either, so what's the difference?) They had their little scenes devoted to each type of humor. The funny drug scene, the funny gay joke scene, the funny N-word scene. Anyway, I found most of the humor funny, and I also enjoyed Smith & Lawrence's chemistry. Regardless of how good the action was, the movie wouldn't be the same without them.

And the action in this movie was pretty over-the-top, especially the chases. They drove into buildings, blew stuff up, and destroyed a lot of shit. And that's always fun to watch. There were a lot of bullets flying, people being shot quite explicitly. None of this "off-screen" or "implied" violence here. If you didn't see a guy get killed then it didn't happen. And believe me, it happened. A lot. I'm not saying the movie was a gore-fest. It wasn't the Evil Dead Chainsaw Massacre or anything. But it earns its R rating, and I'm not talking about nudity (there was almost none, though Gabrielle Union looked good in a bikini). Cars blow up, buildings blow up, people blow up. And they make good use of digital technology which allows them to do scenes which seem more dangerous than ever, like put a person right in the middle of an explosion, or fill a chase scene with all kinds of bystanders and cars and wreckage. I don't know what exactly was CGI (which is a good thing) but I take it as a testament to the development of digital image technology that this seems to be the year car chases have made a major and welcome comeback, with movies like Matrix Reloaded, Terminator 3, and Bad Boys 2. With the French Connection, Ronin, and the Corruptor, we've seen the best in realism. Now we want to see shit blow up!

So I don't see what's not to like about this movie. You pretty much get exactly what you pay for. Shooting, explosions, chases, and Will Smith and Martin Lawrence making wisecracks off of each other through out the whole thing. It's Bay directing and Bruckheimer producing, so the explosions are bigger, the chases are faster and crazier and the shooting is, well, shootier. There are no pirates or robots or time-travelers to distract you from the bang and the boom and the zoom. Though there is one scene near the end which is a TOTAL, DIRECT rip-off of the hillside shantytown scene near the beginning of the 1985 Jackie Chan movie Police Story (also available in the US as Jackie Chan's Police Force. It's one of Jackie's better action movies. Go rent it!). That distracted me a little as I saw the setup emerge and my jaw dropped, "they're going to rip off Jackie Chan...!" Plot wise, also, the ending of the movie was a bit more of a stretch than I was prepared to accept. There are certain conventions of this type of action movie which you automatically accept. The hero cops never run out of ammo, they never get shot, that sort of thing. But the whole thing at the end...

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when they go to rescue Syd from the drug lord and actually sneak into Cuba, and the whole SWAT team volunteers to go with them, and they even get help from the CIA? Please. "Oh here's a lucky break, guys! My brother is tied into an underground army of rebels who are ready to lay down their lives to help you at a moment's notice!" Just too, TOO convenient. I mean, I know that the whole thing is just to set up the big action finale, but that was too much of a stretch. I can buy the rogue detectives who do whatever they want, but sneaking into a foreign, hostile country and bringing the entire squad with you, and the private army, that's more than one can expect from the rest of the movie's formula.

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I had fun at the movie. It was mindless entertainment, as advertised. My expectations were met, so I was satisfied.