Bad Boys for Life (2020) - January 17, 2020

[Infernal King]

Originally Posted by aoife

I thought Bad Boys II was terrible. The script was completely unfocused, it was all over the place, and the "plot", if you can call it that, was just an excuse to string together a series of action sequences that really didn't serve the story. It was more like a demo reel of sorts. Plus, the dynamics between Marcus and Mike weren't really interesting for the most part, their relationship was full of anger and resentment, and for me, that takes away all the fun.

Sure, there was tension in the first one, but you could also feel how the two of them really loved each other. In the second film, their feelings are all over the place. They're angry at each other one second, and then a minute later, we're supposed to believe they're unconditional friends, but the script never takes us there, we're just supposed to assume what the characters are feeling.

Then, there are the completely illogical characters played by Jordi Molla and Peter Stormare, both fantastic actors, but the script is so poor, that it doesn't matter how talented they are, their characters make strange decisions and there's not enough backstory to support those decisions. Why? Because Michael Bay spends most of the film's running time blowing shit up and setting up cool scenes. Ok, granted, no one watches a Michael Bay film looking for prime examples of character development, but the original Bad Boys and The Rock were spectacular in that regard! So they guy can pull it off. It's just that his priorities obviously changed.

I will always prefer the original film. It was fun, it had a solid story and it was exciting in an honest way. None of those show-off proceedings that would come a few years later in Michael Bay's career, in my opinion.

An excellent critique! I agree and would go further: Bad Boys II is ugly (in every way), homophobic, sexist and racist. It's vile, tasteless and disgusting: jiggling boobs of a dead woman excite the necrophiliacs in the audience, corpses being thrown onto the freeway during a chase, the way Smith and Lawrence treat a boy who wants to take Lawrence's daughter on a date, etc. How is any of this "fun"?

An argument could be made that there are worse movies Michael Bay has made but this witless, bloated, nihilistic piece of shit certainly set a new low for him back in 2003. I can't believe I watched it in the theatre.