The verdict is in and “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is getting mixed reviews — 54 on Metacritic and 69% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you ask me, critics are being too kind to this one.
2020’s “Bad Boys For Life,” as assaultive as the filmmaking might have been, was semi-watchable and actually had some semblance of a plot. The same directors, Adil & Bilall, are back for “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”.
Yes, detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are still the same trigger-happy Miami cops but are now the most wanted men in America. They’ve been framed! What passes as a plot results in a loud, dumb and violent rehash of the first three movies. It’s all slickly delivered via the usual explosives and endless drone shots that populate this franchise.
At least we get a helicopter hijacking that’s pure bro physics. Ditto a shootout at an art gallery that’s brazenly ballsy in its farcical preposterousness. There’s also a tongue-in-cheek reference to Smith’s infamous Oscar slap – in a cowardly brilliant way, it sort of works. I won’t say more. And it wouldn’t be a ‘Bad Boys’ movie without a few scenes involving bikini clad women.
Sure, the chemistry between Smith and Lawrence has its moments, but it feels tired, recycling jokes and ideas that have been worn out. The best moment of the entire movie has nothing to do with Smith or Lawrence — it’s when Marcus’s son-in-law, Reggie (scene-stealer Dennis Greene), is confronted by bad guys during a comically drawn-out home invasion.
In the end, this plays like a greatest hits package. Chris Bremner and Will Beall’s script is pure trash. It takes every action movie trope in the book and recycles it for (attempted) thrills and laughs. This time around, the jokes between Lawrence and Smith don’t work. They come out as feeling forced and unfunny. Smugness has infected their performances. They’re so pleased with their preening shtick.
Adil & Bilal are also not the most, shall we say, inventive duo, mostly influenced by Michael Bay’s frenetic style of action Bay-hem. There’s not a single shot in this movie that lasts more than a few seconds. [D]
The source material, for the uninitiated, is Arrowhead Game Studios' co-op shooter — muscle in power armor defending "Super Earth" from bugs and robots in a war game.