Four years may seem like a long time between sequels in modern Hollywood, but when you’re talking about the Bad Boys franchise, that kind of turnaround time is practically a rush job. Given the 8- and 17-year gaps between the previous films, Bad Boys: Ride or Die is probably the least we’ll ever see these characters age between films.
Since we last left Miami’s bad boy police officers, Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are embracing getting older. Mike is now married, and Marcus’ biggest source of heartache is the low-carb diet he’s been put on by his family. But when the late Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) reaches out to both men from beyond the grave, they soon find themselves embroiled in a statewide conspiracy that will require them to once more join forces with Armando (Jacob Scipio), Mike’s incarcerated son.
At this point, the Bad Boys movies are doing a lot of the same things that the Fast and the Furious franchise has done. They expand the cast of regulars, move characters from villains to heroes, and raise the volume on the action sequences to a thunderous level. But that’s the benefit of starting a franchise at the loudest possible volume. Bad Boys came out of the gate unhinged, spending most of its original runtime on a millionaire cop who shoots people for fun and his oversexed partner who complains about his dead bedroom nonstop. It was bad – really bad – but it ensured that the most ridiculous narrative beats had nowhere to go but down.
If anything, Bad Boys is the Fast and the Furious franchise in reverse. These characters have gotten more grounded with time, and Bad Boys: Ride or Die continues its attempts to humanize Mike by giving him a well-placed panic attack (the tuberculosis of modern action movies: freeze and rally). The series also slyly sidesteps discourse around police movies by putting an on-the-run Mike and Marcus against corrupt law enforcement officers in bed with the cartel. We’ve come a long way from the post-9/11 politics of Bad Boys II; instead of using terrorism to justify any means, Bad Boys: Ride or Die’s plot is constructed around the unchecked systems of power that flourished in the early 2000s.
And much credit also belongs to directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, the returning directors of Bad Boys for Life, for successfully rehashing a style of filmmaking we thought past its prime. Adil & Bilal – as they are credited onscreen – may be Michael Bay’s greatest students. Both of their Bad Boy films adopt the maximalist stylization of the original films while staging the action sequences in longer takes. This is Michael Bay for the John Wick generation: bombastic filmmaking at its finest with complex, multi-level action sequences that give the stunts room to breathe. One early near-death sequence in particular spotlights an eye for craft that only starts with car crashes and explosions.
If Bad Boys for Life shocked audiences and critics with its relevance, then Bad Boys: Ride or Die proves that the window for this franchise is, despite all odds, very much still open. As long as the creative team sticks to the script – and Columbia Pictures would be foolish to try and make these movies without Adil & Bilal behind the camera – we may still get one or two more of these movies before the cast has to call it quits. Or at least until they stop dying Will Smith’s goatee on-camera.
This article appears in June 7 • 2024.