director
Michael Bay
screenwriters
Ron Shelton
Jerry Stahl
story by
Ron Shelton
Marianne Wibberley
Cormac Wibberley
based on
characters created by
George Gallo
producer
Jerry Bruckheimer
cinematographer
Amir Mokri
music
Trevor Rabin
Dr. Dre
editors
Roger Barton
Mark Goldblatt
Thomas A. Muldoon
cast
Martin Lawrence (Marcus Burnett)
Will Smith (Mike Lowrey)
Jordi Molla (Johnny Tapia)
Gabrielle Union (Syd)
Peter Stormare (Alexei)
Theresa Randle (Theresa Burnett)
Joe Pantoliano (Captain Howard)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 146m
u.s.
release: 7/18/03
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other michael
bay films
reviewed on this website:
- armageddon
- the
island
- pearl
harbor
- the
rock
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I don't know quite when I realized
it -- possibly it was when Will Smith had his arm inside a corpse's
belly up to the elbow -- but Bad Boys II is Hollywood
psychopathology writ large, almost demoniacal in its quest to
outdo itself and destroy the audience. This isn't a daffy thrill
ride like Charlie's
Angels: Full Throttle -- it's more like a gut-heaving
rollercoaster that won't stop until it rattles your teeth out.
Yet I had a hard time staying awake through it (and it was an
early-afternoon show). For all its explosive, expensive bluster,
it's no better than any ten cops-vs.-drug-runners flicks of the
'80s, and there isn't a moment that isn't utterly synthetic.
Perhaps that's to be expected
from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay, past
perpetrators of The
Rock, Armageddon,
Pearl
Harbor, and the original Bad Boys, which
gave us Martin Lawrence and Will Smith as renegade cops. After
eight years -- during which time the world got along just fine
without the further adventures of Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) and
Mike Lowrey (Smith) -- they're back to squash an evil druglord
(Jordi Molla) who's looking to push Ecstasy in the nightclubs
of Miami. Mike is trying to figure out how to tell Marcus that
he's going out with Marcus' sister (Gabrielle Union), who's also
an undercover cop. For his part, Marcus is waiting for the right
time to tell the cocky, foolhardy Mike that he wants a less risky
partner. Less a few bombastic sequences, that's more or less
the movie.
Bad Boys II shoots its works rather early, with
the aggressive freeway car chase (which leaves the road littered
with wrecked autos and, at one point, a boat) you might've caught
in the trailer. This is the sort of movie in which a cop drives
an ambulance into a mortuary just to provide a distraction for
the "heroes" (what would the characters in a lesser-budget
movie do? Probably fall back on their imagination). There are
shootouts galore, including one in which we see a bullet pass
in loving slow motion through Martin Lawrence's left buttock
and slam bloodily into a Ku Klux Klansman's throat. Everything
is way over the top, but since Michael Bay has none of the wit
of, say, James Cameron (who knows how to stage excessive chaos
with rhythm and force), it just numbs you after about an hour.
When we're not watching action
blowouts, we're supposed to laugh at the film's generous helping
of sick humor. For this I assume the credited screenwriters Ron
Shelton (Dark
Blue) and Jerry Stahl (Permanent Midnight) were
responsible, though it comes off as smart writers trying to stave
off boredom. Smith and Lawrence gang up on a hapless kid who
shows up to take Lawrence's daughter on a date; they pelt him
mercilessly with taunts and intimidation, but the actor playing
the kid hardly even reacts, so there's no fun in watching the
guys scare an inexpressive lump.
And the film really has it
in for dead bodies (a hiding place for drugs); many of them are
run over in yet another car chase, the top of a cadaver's skull
falls off in a mortuary, and Lawrence is stuck hiding under a
sheet with a well-endowed female corpse. There's also a fair
amount of horsing around with someone's severed finger. When
Joseph Wambaugh's novel The Choirboys came out almost
thirty years ago, it created a stir because of the sordid exploits
of its cop characters. Wambaugh's cops have nothing on the adventures
of Smith and Lawrence, and they're supposed to be the heroes.
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