The year 1995 contributed a lot to American culture. After all, it was the year that gave us Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” The Goofy Movie, Bad Boys and, most importantly, me. Now, 29 years later, the Bad Boys franchise and I are still kicking around.
The fourth installment in the series, Bad Boys: Ride Or Die, again finds Miami detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) as bickering brothers-in-arms fighting to keep the streets clean. This time, perpetual bachelor Mike has finally decided to settle down, though his marital bliss does not last long as Marcus collapses from a heart attack at his wedding. Obviously, he survives, but to top it all off, the Mexican cartel decides to frame the duo’s beloved former Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) for corruption, and the partners must fight to clear his name while avoiding capture themselves.
The Bad Boys franchise is one where if you’ve seen one movie, you’ve seen them all. You shouldn’t go into watching Ride or Die expecting narrative excellence or a philosophical musing about the human condition. It’s an entertaining summer popcorn flick with a paper-thin, trope-heavy plot. If that’s what you’re into, it does a satisfactory job. If not, then you only blame yourself for watching it.
While the best way to enjoy Bad Boys: Ride or Die is to turn your brain off and let the movie happen without thinking about the plot, that’s my job, so here we go. My biggest gripe is that, to the best of my recollection, the movie never even explains why the mafia is going through all the trouble of destroying the legacy of Captain Howard, who, at this point, has been dead for years. Or if it does, the reason is inconsequential and immediately forgettable. My best guess is that it’s the easiest way to bring Pantoliano back into the mix, using “if-you’re-seeing-this-I’m-already dead” recordings and spiritual dream sequences.
The film feels like a collage of detective tropes, cliches, and series legacy moments hastily slapped together to play on its audience’s nostalgia. The opening scene of the boys driving way too fast in Mike’s car? Check. A shot of a Hollywood-esque “Miami” sign? You know it. A dance club scene? You can’t have a movie set in Miami without one. On top of repeating its series’ greatest hits, Ride or Die also seems to be taking pages out of the Fast and Furious playbook. Despite the last film being their supposed “one last time,” the heroes are back with their close “family” of allies, including the villain from the previous movie turned reluctant hero(Jacob Scipio), facing impossible odds with increasingly over-the-top violence. It’s a predictable plot, and if you can see a twist coming, you’re right.
But again, once you turn your brain off, it’s good fun. Longtime Bad Boys fans will find plenty of easter eggs and series callbacks to enjoy. The sweeping shots of sun-drenched Miami and mostly smooth camerawork make for a gorgeous big-screen experience. Every action scene is impressively choreographed and has moments of genuine shock and awe. The best of these are two brief scenes featuring Scipio as Mike’s former drug lord son Armando engaging in mano-a-mano combat and one with Marcus’ son-in-law Reggie (Dennis Greene) displaying gun-fu skills that would impress John Wick. The fighting is tense, tight and fast-paced, and each scene has a unique element that sets it apart, like a first-person perspective or a flaming car chase. The film’s best moments are highly reminiscent of watching an over-the-top video game.
Beyond these bright spots, it feels like a film created by children trying to seem like grown-ups. While I can confess to swearing like a sailor myself, the sheer amount of swearing for the sake of swearing reminds me of a kid flexing the new cuss word he learned by using it as many times as humanly possible. It’s as if the writers aimed to earn an R-rating based on language alone. The humor is also juvenile, relying multiple times on penis and butt jokes. Repetition is the theme here, and if something isn’t funny after three tries, the seventh time may be the charm.
The real bad boys of the film are the writers, directors and Lawrence, but not in the good type of bad. Continuing a trend from the 2020s Bad Boys For Life, everything about Marcus is poorly done and insufferable. In the first two movies in the series, Marcus is the comic relief, but he’s still a tough, competent, self-sufficient cop who was fun to watch. In Ride or Die, he’s oafish, grating and inconsistent. For most of the movie, Marcus’ face is plastered with an expression that’s somewhere between bewilderment and constipation. However, I don’t know whether the blame for that goes to Lawrence or directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. Writers Chris Bremner, Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan reserve all of the film’s worst jokes for Marcus and reuse them ad nauseam. The character flip flops from one minute to the next, at once being calm and goofy about how he believes he can’t die, then for no reason at all getting very aggressive and waving his gun around with reckless abandon in the very next scene. It’s as if the three writers wrote their sections of the script separately, then haphazardly slapped them together and called it a day without any care for cohesion. It’s a shame because Marcus was previously the more interesting, complex character and an authentic complementary foil for Mike, but he’s been downgraded to a clown.
To their credit, the writing team had some interesting ideas. Newlywed Mike is still grappling with his feelings of guilt regarding Captain Howard’s death, and combined with worries about his wife’s safety, he begins to get panic attacks. After his brush with death, Marcus is afflicted with a new appreciation for his life, a sense of spirituality and the belief that he can’t die because it’s “not my time.” Instead of fleshing these aspects out and using them as tools for significant character development for the previously unflappable cop, Mike’s panic attacks seem only to be included as a convenient plot device that allows the final action sequence to happen. Marcus is once again an overplayed joke and much of his second chance at life is spent on a cartoonish obsession with junk food.
Will Smith’s performance as the suave, badass Mike Lowrey is as consistent as ever. Mike’s aggression and bravado align with the stakes of his mission and the danger at hand. He’s just as good here as in the first Bad Boys. Members of the supporting cast, like Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Ioan Gruffoad, Rhea Seehorn and Paola Nuñez, provide solid and convincing performances that help ground the serious and cop procedural aspects of the movie. However, they don’t have enough screen time to leave a lasting impact.
The most enjoyable character is Jacob Scipio, who portrays Armando Aretas. Armando’s strained cautiousness with his estranged father, Mike, provides a welcome source of tension and character development. Scipio’s gruff stoicism matches Smith’s perfectly, and his matter-of-fact line delivery and swagger steal every scene he is in.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die is another entry into the recent canon of middle-aged actors trying to recapture the glory of their action-hero days. The result is very middle of the road. The action scenes are exciting and creative, but nearly everything else about the film is repetitive and uninspired. Poor writing and a gratingly hammy performance by Lawrence undercut much of the enjoyment of the film’s satisfying visual spectacle. The Bad Boys franchise has had a good ride, and even though this fourth film leaves room for another sequel or a spin-off, we should let it die.