{"id":2111,"date":"2024-08-06T04:18:33","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T04:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2111"},"modified":"2024-10-14T12:38:08","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:38:08","slug":"bad-boys-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/06\/bad-boys-for-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Boys for Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Bad Boys for Life <\/strong>(2020)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 123 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual references, brief drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Adil and Bilall (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chris Bremner, Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lorne Balfe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robrecht Heyvaert\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 17, 2020 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Charles Melton, Paola Nunez, Kate del Castillo, Nicky Jam, Joe Pantoliano, Theresa Randle, Jacob Scorpio, DJ Khaled.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $204.4M (US)\/$424.6M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I never in my wildest dreams thought I\u2019d ever hear myself utter these words but you know what they say about desperate times- e.g. January at the multiplexes. Where is Michael Bay when you need him? Yes, that Michael Bay; the same one responsible for five Transformers movies. So where is he? Making a cameo as a wedding MC in Bad Boys for Life<\/strong>, a belated three-quel that reunites Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as a pair of hotshot Miami cops joining forces one last time to take down a cartel leader with a personal grudge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Bay directed the first two outings and while they\u2019re in no way, shape or form classics, they stand out due to the extreme levels of violence, noise, destruction and bedlam orchestrated by Bay. As one of the few critics willing to admit to loving Bad Boys II, I wanted more of that kind of thing in Bad Boys for Life<\/strong>. The replacement directors, Belgian-born duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (set to direct Beverly Hills Cop IV next), dial things back a bit. It\u2019s almost like the movies, like its main characters, are slowing down with age. And it has aged. It\u2019s been 17 years since the last installment and 25 years since the first one.<\/p>\n

So what have our hero cops, Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence), been up to lately? Well, Marcus has just become a first-time grandfather. He\u2019s starting to seriously consider retirement. Mike, on the other hand, hasn\u2019t changed all that much. He still wears stylish clothes and drives expensive cars. He\u2019s nowhere near ready to put in his papers. Nobody informed the cruel hands of fate of this. A guy on a motorcycle guns him down on a crowded street. Mike may be temporarily down, but he\u2019s nowhere near out. No way! It\u2019s going to take more than that to get rid of the \u201cbulletproof cop\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the six months it takes Mike to recover, a few others- a judge, prosecutor and forensic specialist- are killed by the same guy. Mike, now back on his feet, is determined to find out who\u2019s behind the shootings and why. He presses on despite orders from long-suffering Captain Howard (Pantoliano, The Matrix) to stay out of it. He asks Marcus for help, but his longtime partner\/best friend made a promise to God to completely swear off violence if He allowed Mike to survive so the answer is no. That leaves a team of millennial police officers called AMMO (Advanced Miami Metro Operations) led by Mike\u2019s ex-girlfriend Rita (Nunez, TV\u2019s The Purge), to back him up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As for the identity of the person behind the violence, it\u2019s no secret. It\u2019s the wife (Castillo, The 33) of a cartel leader that Mike helped put away early on in his career. She escapes from prison with the help of her son Armando (Scipio) who she orders to kill everybody involved in the case against her family. There\u2019s a little more to it than that; I\u2019ll only say that it\u2019s the stuff of a silly Mexican telenovela<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To be perfectly blunt, Bad Boys for Life<\/strong> is as routine as action-comedies get with all the shoot-outs, vehicle chases, comic interplay between the two stars and other assorted mayhem. The climax even takes place in a burning building during a rainstorm. In regard to Mike acting as a consultant to AMMO, it\u2019s a case of old school vs. new school police work. The three young cops, played by Vanessa Hudgens (Spring Breakers), Alexander Ludwig (Vikings) and Charles Melton (Riverdale), are proficient in 21st<\/sup> century law enforcement- computers, drones and non-lethal weapons- while Mike is still a boots on the ground\/break down the door\/pile up the bodies type of cop.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are several jokes about Marcus\u2019 trying to enjoy his new life of retirement and non-violence. Only we know that neither thing will stick. Sooner or later, he\u2019ll be pulled back in. These are plot elements we\u2019ve seen in dozens of action-comedies. Swap out the leads for two other guys, change a few story details and you could call it Lethal Weapon 5.<\/p>\n

Castillo\u2019s character, a self-proclaimed bruja<\/em> (a Mexican witch), is like something out of a spoof. I can see her character being used in a Last Action Hero-style satire of franchise action flicks. Scipio is okay as the vicious cartel guy. Pantoliano is still funny as the Pepto-Bismol, f-word spouting captain always angry about Mike and Marcus\u2019 reckless ways.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I noticed something very odd about Bad Boys for Life<\/strong>. It openly borrows ideas from Smith\u2019s previous live-action outing, last fall\u2019s Gemini Man. Take the villain Armando. He rides a motorcycle, he\u2019s clad in black and his face is concealed by his helmet. There\u2019s also a scene where Smith\u2019s character fights Armando on a hotel roof as they make their way to the ground. Frankly, I\u2019m amazed. Gemini Man just came out about three months ago and somebody\u2019s already copying it. Did they do reshoots or did the writers get an early peek at the Gemini Man script? This cannot be a coincidence.<\/p>\n

Bad Boys for Life<\/strong> has some amusing moments even though it feels like Smith and Lawrence are just going through the motions most of the time. They don\u2019t seem overly enthused about reviving their Bad Boys characters. It\u2019s been nearly a decade since Lawrence starred in a movie; the last one was 2011\u2019s Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son. Like his character here, he was pulled out of retirement for one last ride.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Oh, don\u2019t hold me to the \u201clast ride\u201d part; a mid-credits scene promises a fourth movie. If this one hits, it\u2019ll happen.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bad Boys for Life (2020)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 123 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual references, brief drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Adil and Bilall (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chris Bremner, Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lorne Balfe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robrecht Heyvaert\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 17, 2020 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Bad-Boys-for-Life-PIC.jpg?fit=960%2C540&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2111"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6040,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111\/revisions\/6040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}