BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE - Mark Reviews Movies

Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Columbia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 6, 2024

If the two stars could have their way, one could imagine Will Smith and Martin Lawrence joking around with each in between bursts of action when their cop characters have been years retired. The two actors are funny, but the appeal of this series, which is somehow on its fourth entry after beginning almost 30 years ago, is how funny the two of them can be together. Bad Boys: Ride or Die occasionally remembers that. The rest of the movie is a slog of nonsensical plotting and incoherent action.

It gets back to what screenwriter Chris Bremner and Will Beall apparently believe to be the basics of this series, after the last one started questioning the enthusiastically violent tactics of its protagonists and wondering if age might catch up to them. As some may recall (and some amount of recollection is necessary, since this entry is more or less a direct sequel to Bad Boys for Life), that previous movie introduced a new team for Smith's Mike Lowrey and Lawrence's Marcus Burnett to play along and nice with during an investigation into a drug cartel.

That squad had modern technology and an attitude of being responsible with the power entrusted in them as law enforcement officers. It's telling that three of those team members return here, and all of them fall into the backdrop immediately, as Mike and Marcus set out on their own to uncover a conspiracy involving crooked cops, government, officials, and at least one cartel. Forget responsibility and accountability, apparently, as for the fact that our heroes are three decades further into their careers as occasionally rogue cops, the movie—and perhaps the actors—doesn't want us thinking about that too much, either.

More to the point, this new installment attempts to do considerably less than its predecessor, which might be admirable if this new one was more capable of handling even the bare minimum. It's barely able to keep up with its minimal ambitions, which have Mike and Marcus running around Miami and the surrounding area, figuring out who framed their dead boss for taking money from drug dealers, and getting into chases, fights, and shootouts that amount to a lot of quick-cut noise.

Our heroes do get one additional bit of development each at the top. Mike marries his physical therapist Christine (Melanie Liburd), leading to him having a couple of panic attacks at inopportune times out of fear of losing the one good thing he thinks he has had in his life, and Marcus has a heart attack at the wedding reception. This leads to a dreamy sequence of Marcus in a kind of limbo, seeing his murdered boss Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) and all of the incarnations he and Mike had in past lives. It's mostly, though, the setup for a couple of running gags: that Marcus believes himself to be invincible and Marcus harping on Mike for being so stubborn in every life that the two souls knew each other—especially this one.

Those riffs are funnier than any other element of the movie is successful at what it's attempting, and it comes down to Smith and Lawrence still succeeding at playing an old comedic pairing with a lot of chemistry. When they bicker and banter, it still feels authentic, even if this installment shows that the series is running out of reasons to keep these characters bickering and bantering.

That means the plot, which has a generic villain (played by Eric Dane) framing the deceased Howard—but refusing to kill the two cops who clearly want to find him until they actually get close, which is quite convenient for our protagonists—and Mike enlisting the aid of his imprisoned son Armando (Jacob Scipio) to identify the bad guy, takes the primary focus. It can't quite decide what it wants to do until Bremner and Beall arrive at a somewhat clever idea, turning Mike, Marcus, and Armando into wanted fugitives being hunted by Howard's daughter (played by Rhea Seehorn). That doesn't last long or result in much humor, of course, because, like the characters, the narrative is in a rush to get through the routine and get to the action.

As staged by returning directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (credited as Adil & Bilall), some of the action of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, such as Marcus riding on the hood of a speeding car or a brawl in a crashing helicopter, is theoretically neat. The filmmakers' restless camera, constantly shaking and flying past key moments, is also in a hurry and, like the rest of the movie, breezes past the few elements that might have worked.

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