It’s great to have detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Bennett (Martin Lawrence) back together after 17 years (Bad Boys 2 – 2003) where we have no idea what the guys have been up to. Lowrey remains single and is now going through some sort of midlife crisis, whilst Lawrence becomes a granddad and has his sights set on retirement. The film maybe has a little bit more of a story than you might anticipate from a Bad Boys film, but remains filled with the stupidity and excitement you had come to expect.
I must admit to some level of bias here, with Bad Boys being one of my most watched films – I’m not sure how this happened really, we had a lot of long journeys when we (my sister and I) were at school and we seemed to have two DVDs to choose from for the car; Bad Boys or Peter Kay: Live at the Bolton Albert Halls. Even now, whenever I hear Shane Lowry’s name mentioned while watching Sky Sports coverage of the golf, I say his name as if I’m Marcus Bennett pretending to be Mike Lowrey in the original film.
The film has a fairly standard revenge plot, with the wife and son of a Mexican drug lord seeking to avenge his death, by killing any person with an involvement in his trial and imprisonment including ‘MIKE Lowwwreeee!’ Like the other two films it is a perfect ‘take your brain out’ film, sit back and enjoy, and don’t take it too seriously. Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi have replaced Michael Bay as director, and in a way similar to the Die Hard films, which I still see as a trilogy, even though there are about 17 of them now, I don’t think this becomes a trilogy just because they made a third film. This is more of an homage to the earlier films – friends reunited (if anyone remembers that) for one last ride.
The camaraderie between the pair of detectives is what carries the film, even when the script temporarily separates them. There are a number of moments of silliness in the film to look out for including a toast of “we ride together, we die together, bad boys for life” at a wedding, the pair exclaiming “we fly together, we die together” as the pair board a plane to Mexico, realising you probably shouldn’t say such a thing, and Lowrey later convincing Bennett to do something stupid that he doesn’t want to do and justifying it by saying they are like the “bad boys of the bible.” One of the highlights of the film, however, is when Bennett helps Lowrey to dye his beard (spoiler alert) in a coma (spoiler alert – he doesn’t stay in it), after he had earlier claimed that he doesn’t dye it.
The terrible twosome was joined by the Advance Miami Metro Operations (AMMO) team. If you’ve seen the trailer for the film, it is the group of young cops that sing “Bad Boys” in an incredibly cringey way. I thought I was going to hate them. I didn’t. I actually grew to like them and the relationship they had with the old-timers, Lowrey and Bennett.
The film signs off with the dynamic duo singing the soothing sounds of “Bad Boys” to stop Bennett’s new grandchild from crying. It really is a shame Smith and Lawrence have not been in more films together. The film is deliberately daft and extremely entertaining – if you like the bad boys films, you will love this too. I think it is the best of the ‘trilogy’.
ClingFilm 