I honestly wouldn’t have ever imagined how excited I would get for a Bad Boys film, but the third installment, Bad Boys for Life, very much breathed life into this franchise which seemed dead in the water after Michael Bay got busy making other films. Adil El Erbi and Bilall Fallah took the series into their arms and gave it the creative juice it needed to make these films fun and get people excited for these films.
Bad Boys: Ride of Die sees Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) attempt to uncover the truth, after their former captain is accused of corruption, they try to clear his name and discover who is behind it all.
I’m going to start by talking about the directing duo El Arbi and Fallah who really got attention after directing Bad Boys for Life a few years ago. Since then their lives changed, particularly in the superhero genre. They directed the pilot episode of Ms Marvel, the strongest episode by a long way, setting a perfect tone for the series to come. After then they were tapped by Warner Bros to direct Batgirl, and then it went downhill. Batgirl was set to star Leslie Grace as the title character, as well as Brendan Fraser and have Michael Keaton returning as Batman. Now that might sound a little messy, and Warner Bros executives weren’t happy with the project after the film was completed, they decided it wasn’t good enough to break even or even bother dropping on their streaming service MAX, they decided, for tax reasons, to cancel the film altogether (with no notice before hand for the cast and crew) and essentially delete the film from existence so noone will ever see what they got to make. A stupid and ridiculous decision, the film was already made, you may as well release it or even sell it to another streamer to make something! They then returned to direct this film, having also been tapped to direct The Mummy reboot for Universal.
Now, in anticipation for Bad Boys: Ride or Die, it’s rumoured that the directing team is on the shortlist at Marvel to direct the next Spider-Man film. And what a fantastic choice they would be. It was a lot of what I was thinking about while watching this film. They add creative shots, and have the perfect tone for street level crime, not too serious, but would be the perfect fun tone for a character like Spider-Man, and could see them dealing with Kingpin or Tombstone as a villain, and introducing the likes of Black Cat and Silver Sable. I can picture it perfectly, it just makes sense, make it happen Feige, and let them show WB what they missed out on.
Will Smith has struggled to escape the shadow he created for himself after the infamous slap incident at the Oscars a couple of years ago. He has only starred in one project since his Oscar winning performance in King Richard, clearly somewhat being cast out a bit by Hollywood, or perhaps just taking a bit of a break, because he does plenty of projects in the pipeline. For me his role in these films alongside Martin Lawrence, are one of the better projects of his career. The chemistry these two friends have with eachother are what keep fans coming back for more, the story is basic and this film is even less complicated than the previous entry.
The action set pieces are pretty fun, and at the very least let the creative team behind these films to have fun, as well as the cast creating these sequences. Some great and unique cinematography from Robtrecht Heyvaert keeps the film from being boring, and ahead of the film become a paint by numbers action film.
Overall, Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a fun, easy going watch, a reminder of the fun time you can have going to the cinema and just watching a simple action film that has a few jokes that land, but the chemistry between the two leads are what make it, amongst the forgettable characters who don’t get enough screen time. Directors, El Arbi and Fallah deserve a lot of praise for this franchise, and I hope they continue to blossom because they make great fun films.
What did you think of Bad Boys: Ride or Die?
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