The Simpson-Bruckheimer action recipe is like cinematic comfort food for the adrenaline starved. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence serve up an explosive bowl of macaroni and cheese in “Bad Boys for Life” (2020). Twenty-five years after the first installment of the franchise, cars still explode at the slightest provocation, guns still have unlimited bullets and helicopters still helicopt. Also, bad guys still can’t shoot worth a damn and story lines still take a backseat to blowing shit up. This time Smith’s Mike Lowrey has some kind of Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader thing going on. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter.
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“Bad Boys II” (2003) begins with a shootout and car chase that wrecks half the vehicles in Dade County, including a boat. It ends with an invasion of Cuba led by Miami PD, the DEA and the CIA. Is it necessary to mention it’s a Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer production? The two hours in between are filled with more shootouts and car chases, plus wacky banter between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. There’s a plot that involves catching a bad guy, but it’s superfluous. A good movie for when you want to turn off your brain and watch shit blow up.
Tea Leoni, action hero. That’s my big takeaway from “Bad Boys” (1995). It’s a typical Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay shootemup, with explosions, helicopters and Tcheky Karyo as the cliche foreign bad guy. Oh, and there’s Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Mutt-and-Jeff detectives with blazing guns and wacky banter. Smith is good. Lawrence, as usual, is too much of a good thing. Joe Pantoliano is in it, too, as the cliche harried captain of maverick cops who play by their own sets of rules. Speaking of Pantoliano, Leoni’s real last name is Pantaleoni, and she wears the big-boy pants here.
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