Just barely a few minutes into Bad Boys: Ride or Die, there was a shot that completely threw me for a loop. Early in the film, Miami detective Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) gets a heart attack at his partner Mike Lowrey’s (Will Smith) wedding. Rather than the standard fade to black, the camera suddenly rotates as Marcus falls to the ground, at the moment of impact, Marcus crashes through the floor, ending up in an underwater representation of the “afterlife”, looking like an alternate version of the Sunken Place or a Kingdom Hearts intro.
It’s an insane visual that seemingly comes out of nowhere, but also feels emblematic of the rest of Ride or Die, a hyper-stylized sequel that almost has no right to be as impressive as it is.
Marcus recovers from that heart attack just in time for his and Mike’s newest task: Their deceased former boss Capt. Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano) is suddenly accused of corruption after a large amount of cartel money is found in his bank accounts. When Mike and Marcus attempt to find evidence exonerating Howard alongside Mike’s estranged son Armando (Jacob Scipio), they themselves are set up and a bounty is placed on them, putting them not only on the run from US Marshals and the mysterious villain behind it all, but also every gang in Miami is on their head.
It should go without saying Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s chemistry remains as on point as it has been for nearly 30 years. I’m also happy to report Ride or Die is easily the most consistently hilarious film in the franchise. While the duo’s banter and arguments are a staple of the series, some of the gags have admittedly been hit-or-miss, especially the mean-spirited ones in Bad Boys II, a movie I love despite that. This time around though, Marcus’ near-death experience in the intro leads him to have a misguided sense of invincibility all throughout, which leads to several of the movie’s best gags and the funniest Martin Lawrence has been in decades.
“Walking in, I didn’t expect Bad Boys: Ride or Die to be the movie to truly rejuvenate my love for this franchise, and yet that’s exactly what happened.”
Speaking of Bad Boys II, I originally said in my review of the previous film, Bad Boys For Life, that while I had fun with that film, it was very noticeably missing the Bayhem that made me love those movies in the first place. It seems like returning directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah almost used the last movie as a testing ground because the action scenes here not only surpass the last movie entirely, I’d put it on par with II in terms of how impressively chaotic these set-pieces are. There’s one sequence that surprisingly involves fan-favourite character Reggie and is guaranteed to be one of the most crowd-pleasing moments of the year.
The camera work throughout feels very much inspired by Michael Bay, but Adil and Bilall also put their own unique stamp on it. Yes, there’s the trademark slow-mo and the big explosions, but there are amazing tracking shots and even first-person, close-quarters shootouts that had me losing it. Hell, it’s hilarious how the only other action movie I’ve seen make good use of drone cameras after Ambulance was another Bay-associated franchise.
The only real duds I found this time around were the lack of personal stakes in comparison to the last film. While Marcus grapples with the near-death experience, Mike suffers from PTSD from losing Capt. Howard and his fear of potentially losing other loved ones like his new wife Christine (Melanie Liburd). While the former is used for great comedy, they never really delve into the latter beyond Smith repeatedly brushing it off, and it all just conveniently goes away in the third act. By that same token, Eric Dane does play lead villain McGrath well, even though his character felt really forgettable in the long run.
The only time I felt it recaptured those stakes was when it came to the fantastic-yet-underused Rhea Seehorn as Capt. Howard’s daughter Judy, the US Marshal leading the manhunt against Mike and Marcus. Her vendetta against Armando (who killed her father in the last movie) is interesting, and while it provides a great conflict for her and Mike, it’s one that gets put on the backburner for far too long.
Walking in, I didn’t expect Bad Boys: Ride or Die to be the movie to truly rejuvenate my love for this franchise, and yet that’s exactly what happened. This is genuinely some of the most fun I’ve had in a theatre this year. If anything, the level of creativity on hand here from Adil and Bilall made me even angrier that we’ll never get to see their Batgirl movie. As someone who loves action movies more than any other genre, between this and the also-fantastic Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, we’re off to a great start. I’m hoping the rest of the summer’s offerings can maintain this momentum.
