a way to understand bad boy The franchise is a referendum on changing cultural perceptions of masculinity.
The first two films, released in 1995 and 2003 respectively, followed the brash antics of two ruthless Miami cops, Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowry (Will Smith) . Mike and Marcus are a classic movie oddball couple: Marcus is slovenly, stupid, sloppy, irritable, and married; Marcus is handsome, intense, energetic, and very, very single. But they all share brotherly qualities – vulgarity, violence, competitiveness, sex obsession, and often engaging in insulting comedy, much of it with a homophobic undertone. They are also comrades-in-arms, loyal to each other. Today, blatantly rude behavior would be considered toxic masculinity. But the label didn’t exist in 1995.
The early films were all directed by Michael Bay, the raucous commercial director who would later go on to make Armageddon, Pearl Harborand the first five Transformers movies, people understood that their behavior was extreme, offensive, and disgusting. After all, they are bad boys. But they don’t care if anyone is offended.
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence play larger-than-life action heroes whose obnoxious looks are meant to be endearing. The audience is meant to enjoy their naughty behavior and derive pleasure from the offense of it all. They were just men being men. Brothers are brothers. The subtext of all the swearing, leering, strutting, and shooting is more or less “guy rock.”
But when the team rises again Bad boy for life In early 2020, just weeks before the pandemic shut down most movie theaters, that confident assertion seemed more like a question.
Marcus and Mike are still the swaggering, foul-mouthed, first-shooting Alphas. But their back-and-forth insulting volleys, while not exactly PG-rated, aren’t as graphic, and they move a bit slower. They are older now, their appearance of invulnerability has been pierced, and the recklessness of their youth has finally caught up with them. It turns out that Mike has a long-lost son who has ties to the drug cartel they’re trying to take down. Marcus became a grandfather and announced his intention to retire from police work. Their actions come with a price, a fatal price. This is what it means to be a bad boy for life.
The latest issue, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, further deepening the concept, but with diminishing returns. In the opening minutes, long-time womanizer Mike gets married. Marcus suffered a heart attack during the ceremony. When the bad guys show up and the gunfire and explosions begin, naturally Mike’s long-lost son gets involved. There was still a lot of swearing and shooting. Remaining anti-authoritarian tendencies put the two police officers at odds with their superiors. Mike and Marcus remain the closest and most loyal brothers. But the bad boys of 2024 aren’t as bad as they used to be.
Which is a shame, because they’re also not that interesting.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a fanservice-laden rehash of its predecessor: cameos again and reminders of the series’ decades-long history. Again, there are some midlife milestones in the book that aim to reflect on growing older, realizations and revelations about the meaning of life, and silly jokes about the indignities of aging, most of which revolve around Marcus’s reaction to junk food after the doctor ordered it The obsession unfolded to improve his diet.
It’s not a complete remake of the previous film, but it feels like a bland remix with almost every major element having something repeated Bad boy for life. Given the film’s success — and due to pandemic shutdowns, it ended up being Highest-grossing movies of 2020——This is understandable. There were scattered laughs throughout the hilarious improvisation. Even in their old age, Will Smith and Marcus Lawrence remain a strong odd couple on screen. And the director Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah concoct some spirited (if slightly silly) action set pieces that include an alligator-infested theme in an abandoned South Florida mansion Full of first-person gunfights taking place in the park.
But in most cases, bad boy ride or die There’s a sense of creative safety and caution that belies the series’ earlier recklessness. It’s deliberately inoffensive, not scary, but perfunctory and vaguely shameful about everything that’s come before. They’re still men being men and brothers being brothers – but, as if on purpose, these guys don’t rock the same way they once did. As the song goes: What to do?
