Cancer is often described in layman’s terms as the cells of the body performing their functions without any biological checks and balances to keep them from hindering or overtaking each other. I’ve found it to be a useful metaphor lately for franchise cinema, and what can happen when it goes wrong: a film’s franchise elements metastasize and dominate a film, trying to bolster intellectual property at every turn, rejecting a scene to pass by without any sort of callback, meta-joke or attempt at one let the collection happen.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the fourth in Michael Bay’s series of buddy-cop films in 1995, seems an unlikely victim of franchise cancer. The fun of a Bad Boys movie – as distinct as it may be from a film series with a decade or more between previous entries – comes mostly from watching its two uniquely gifted comedic leads, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, engage in antics under the direction of some of cinema’s foremost explosion enthusiasts. But in Ride or diethe delights of Smith and Lawrence’s characters getting on each other’s nerves during impossibly explosive gunfights are continually derailed, as the script incorporates or reconverts every previous element from previous films into the grand scheme of this one.
Bad boys for life‘s Belgian directing duo, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (Ms. Marvel) return for Ride or die, which directly follows the previous film. Detectives Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) are still trigger-happy Miami narcotics cops who play by their own rules. But they have more support these days, from AMMO support team members Kelly and Dorn (recurring cast members Vanessa Hudgens and Alexander Ludwig) and their immediate boss, Lieutenant Rita Secada (Paola Núñez). They also get lots of reminders to slow down. Mike, the loser of the two loose cannons, is finally settling down and getting married, while Marcus has a near-death experience where everyone tells him to diet and relax. Unfortunately, it makes him think he’s invincible.
Photo: Frank Masi/Columbia Images
This time, the partners discover a conspiracy to destroy the reputation of their late captain, Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano), who died in Bad boys for life. In their efforts to clear the name of their former boss, the two are portrayed as co-conspirators and forced to go on the run. It is perhaps the first and most aggravating shortcoming Ride or die that almost an hour of the film’s 115-minute running time elapses to do so – the film’s central premise! – actually happens. The second is all the above franchise cancer.
Ride or die never misses an opportunity to emphasize that this is a Bad Boys movie full of Bad Boys stuff. That conspiracy to trap Captain Conrad? It is attached to the housing in the middle Bad Boys II. A vital clue to who is behind it comes from Fletcher (John Salley), who you probably won’t recognize unless you’ve recently seen the first two films. ‘Bad Boys’, the Inner Circle hit from 1987 made famous by the TV show Police and adopted as the theme song of the film franchise? You will hear no fewer than three versions of it. Plus, Mike and Marcus sing it twiceand people keep calling them “the Bad Boys” like they’re the X-Men.
That makes everything Ride or die feel like a less successful version of Quick five. That film took what was at the time a series of four tonally different, loosely connected Fast & Furious films and spun them into a cohesive franchise with some timeline shenanigans and tons of charisma. However, the Bad Boys films don’t have as much raw material to form a modern engine of eternal cinema. They have Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, and a very good callback involving Marcus’ son-in-law, Reggie (Dennis Greene). That’s about it.
Photo: Frank Masi/Columbia Images
Most of the fault can arguably be laid at the feet of Chris Bremner and Will Beall’s script, which is poorly paced and chock-full of clichés. (It’s kind of hard to keep your composure when Joe Pantoliano, in a pitch-perfect impersonation of Princess Leia Organa, leaves the Bad Boys a recorded message calling them “my only hope.”) Smith and Lawrence playfully make some pretty terrible jokes, and the supporting cast returning Bad boys for life is sturdy enough for government work, even when working with such uninspired material.
El Arbi and Fallah’s direction is its brightest aspect Ride or die. The pair have since risen in level Bad boys for life, who reveal themselves as enthusiastic students of Bayhem, eager to deploy camera work that is as exciting as the shootings it captures. Frantic drone footage zooms through gunfire, cameras pan across the barrel of a gun, and nothing ever stands still. It’s a bit overwhelming: understated compared to Bay in their previous effort, they reach a bit too far here. Their action shines brightest when someone is able to credibly deliver it to the screen, like Jacob Scipio, who returns as Mike Lowrey’s long-lost son from Bad boys for life.
However, the over-the-top shenanigans are all in service of retrofitting a sprawling franchise across a handful of films that were never really about strong narrative ties. This is all the more frustrating given the few moments when Doing Find out what the Bad Boys movies are about. Like, for example, the shootout in the third act, where Mike is at his lowest, and it’s up to Marcus to motivate him – by shouting the lines of Run-DMC’s “Peter Piper” at him.
This is the Bad Boys franchise working as it should. There’s no need for constant callbacks to build out an elaborate mythology. It just takes two charismatic guys dishing out jokes of different quality. An irresponsible amount of gunfire is required. And it takes great moments like this, where Martin Lawrence shouts that he needs a “big bad wolf around,” and the audience gets to shout right back, “Not bad means BAD, but bad means GOOD.”
Bad Boys: Ride or Die premieres in theaters Friday, June 7.