Bad Boys for Life ** (2020, Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jacob Scipio, Alexander Ludwig, Vanessa Hudgens) – Movie Review

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are on lively, fair form as Detective Mike Lowrey and Detective Marcus Burnett in directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s slick, confident but violent, unrealistic and overlong third Bad Boys movie after a 17-year gap. Bad Boys for Life is cynical, nasty and unpleasant, but, hey, that’s Bad Boys for you. As sympathetic ‘heroes’, the cops make bad, even terrible role models, yet of course we are supposed to like, admire, even love them. It’s not a great movie to have around in this troubled era.

People get riddled with bullets, and miraculously recover, especially if they are ‘heroes’. Get out of that wheelchair at once, you wimpy gunfire victim! Bad Boys for Life is very pro-gun law, and that ain’t good. Mike Lowrey even tortures a witness to get his vital info, and that ain’t good either. Bad Boys for Life comes with bad attitudes.

Mike and Marcus haven’t grown up since their heyday in the mid-Nineties, though Marcus keeps suggesting that he has. A baby grandkid has turned him soft, though nit for too long of course. Lawrence gets almost all the comedy to do, and he is actually quite amusing, keeping it mostly low key and understated. He doesn’t look as though he could a race with Smith any more, but, as it happens, he doesn’t have to. Fate intervenes, big time.

Jacob Scipio makes an impressive villain as the ruthless Armando Armas, the vicious leader of the Miami drug cartel that Mike Lowrey has urgent personal reasons to try to take down.

Joe Pantoliano as Captain Howard, Kate del Castillo as the evil Isabel Aretas, plus Paola Nuñez as Rita, Alexander Ludwig and Charles Melton as the newly created elite Miami police team AMMO, make welcome and effective appearances, though they could all have more, and better to do. Smith and Lawrence could have less, and better to do. All the characters are simply caricatures, despite all the vain attempts to put flesh and blood on them, which just ends up making the action thriller soapy.

There’s way too much old man and retirement stuff, but that’s nothing compared to the way too much CGI, spoiling several otherwise exciting action sequences, and especially the ridiculous climax, worthy of a lesser Bond movie.

There’s an inevitable air of staleness and tiredness, and the plot is really quite lame, but, as the third part of a Nineties buddy cop action comedy movie, it’s kind of OK and passes the time, though not inoffensively. Cue strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual references and drug use. The atmospheric Florida filming and the big $90,000,000 budget help it to look eye-catching.

[Spoiler alert] Some of the characters do turn out to be mortal, and the film makes the mistake of killing off a couple of its best characters and actors. An end-credits scene mysteriously sets up a sequel, another mistake.

It follows Bad Boys (1995) and Bad Boys II (2003).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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