Movie Review: "Bad Boys for Life" Is Damn Good

Aw, hell yeah.

Any film franchise can eventually age into respectability, so long as it hangs around long enough. Star Wars became a religion. Ghostbusters is now a sacred text. Fast and Furious is for families, and spans generations. The Bad Boys, meanwhile, have become revered elder statesmen, proven by the melancholy subtitle to their third entry—For Life—which wouldn’t be out of place on the posters for a sequel to Cocoon or Amour.

Twenty-five years ago, detectives Mike Lowry (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) were simply trying to prove that you could police the streets of Miami in open shirts and singlets. Now, they’re among modern cinema’s most enduring figures, simply because, well, they’re still here. Don’t disregard stars that defy the test of time through sheer perseverance. 

Michael Bay made his name helming that lively, golden-hued first feature, and he followed it up with the even more excessive Bad Boys II in 2003. It’s taken seventeen years for Smith and Lawrence to reunite, and in that time, cinematic tastes have changed, as have standards of decency. (Even depicting the acts in Bad Boys II, like the defiling of corpses, may have been criminalised since that flick’s release.) Yet Mike and Marcus are the same, albeit emotionally evolved, which you’d hope, given they are now basically a decade older than Danny Glover was in Lethal Weapon.

Bay didn’t come along for the ride this time. He’s stepped aside and been replaced by mononymous Belgian directors Adil and Bilall, who carry on Bay’s solemn duty to blow up everything the studio will allow them to explode. They continue to depict Miami as a city with a sky that doesn’t go from blue to black, but rather orange to purple, and they throw their camera (and cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert) into a series of gonzo melees that often defy belief. They even pull out the old footage of a plane flying over the Miami sign at dusk. It’s a peaceful transition of power.

Bad Boys for Life begins with partners Mike and Marcus contemplating retirement; well, Marcus, a new granddaddy, is the one who wants to retire, while Mike wants to keep running and gunning. The prison break of a very witchy gangster (Kate del Castillo) hellbent on revenge against Mike for a past betrayal speeds up their decision-making. With Marcus unwilling to risk his life anymore, their cranky captain (Joe Pantoliano) assigns Mike to AMMO, a technology-savvy department led by Mike's ex, Rita (Paola Núñez). But because this isn’t called One Bad Boy and Some Young Cops Played by Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig and Charles Melton, Marcus reluctantly postpones his retirement and joins the team for this one. last. job.

And I’m glad! That’s because Bad Boys for Life is surprisingly moving (at times); mostly when it isn’t being extremely awesome. Chalk it up to the odd, nostalgic sensation that simply comes from observing actors over a period of time. That’s what’s been fuelling the Fast and Furious saga to ever-greater heights, and it works again here, with the aged visages of Smith and Lawrence (the latter having been conspicuously absent from screens for some time) carrying actual, erm, gravitas. And to think, just last year, they were trying to CGI the gravitas right off Will Smith’s face in Gemini Man.

Don’t worry: Bad Boys for Life doesn’t take itself too seriously. Adil and Bilall—and the screenwriters Joe Carnahan, Peter Craig and Chris Bremmer—see to that, providing plenty of action scenes that escalate to the point of absurdity. I wondered how they’d top a second act car chase in which Mike and Marcus, driving a motorcycle and sidecar armed with a turret gun, face off against a helicopter. Boy howdy, in the final act, do they.

Bad Boys for Life, enlivened by its vibrant incoming filmmakers, nonetheless rests on its reliable core comic pairing, who are supported by an able cast of new and familiar faces. And just as the repetition of 'family' in Fast and Furious makes us feel all warm and fuzzy, I found myself sucked in by the sudden jolt of meaning that came from the titular mantra in this fourth decade of Bad Boys lore. I knew I was a convert when Mike said, "ride together, die together, bad boys for life" during a wedding toast for Marcus’ daughter, and I thought, "what a beautiful sentiment for that young couple".

4/5

In Australian cinemas. Rated MA15+ for strong violence and coarse language.

Header Image: Sony Pictures