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Drug dealers beware! Despite the nation’s preoccupation
with the war on terror Hollywood moviemakers still have you
in their sights. After an eight-year hiatus, Miami narcotics
detectives Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnet (Lawrence)
are back on the job, this time hot on the trail of a Cuban
ecstasy smuggler. Marcus’s little sister Sydney (Gabrielle
Union) is also along for the ride as an undercover DEA
agent assigned to crack the case. Very little has changed
for the two protagonists. Their shoot first, wisecrack later
method of law enforcement is as effective as ever. Everything
has changed for director Michael Bay. Now a major player
in the industry, he has been given complete artistic control
to carry out his “vision.”
Bad Boys II is so excessive it tests the audience’s
gluttony for punishment. This punishment comes in the form
of loud explosions, gory slow motion death sequences, and
some rather tasteless humor. The bodies pile up—sometimes
not even the bodies of people killed by the protagonists.
This movie features so many corpses that one suspects the
special effects company gave Bay a quantity discount. While
in the line of duty the audience will be subjected to not
one, not two, but three car chases, several megatons of explosives,
and more small arms fire than was discharged in the entire
second gulf war. Two of the car chases feel as though they
were included for the sole purpose of advertising the cars
involved.
Michael Bay’s style is so pervasive throughout the entire
movie he might as well have strolled across the screen a la
Alfred Hitchcock. An army of men in Kevlar and GoreTex
emerges from the water in slow motion, reflective liquid dripping
off of their shiny black guns, their SWAT stencils gleaming
in the light. During all three of the car chases the camera
jumps back and forth between the faces of the drivers inside
and the mayhem outside. Even when the actors are still the
camera isn’t. It’s constantly circling from below, imbuing
the movie with a frenetic energy. Every explosion is a gorgeous
orange in stark contrast to the deep blue sky in the background.
Make no mistake, the movie is beautiful. It just would be
nice for Michael Bay to have tried something new.
Whenever the screen is not dominated by violent chaos, Will
Smith and Martin Lawrence do their banter. Some of the humor
is tasteless and all of it is predictable, but surprisingly
a great deal of it is funny. Whenever both stars are on screen
their comic chemistry more than makes up for shortcomings
in the script. As the straight man to Lawrence’s fool, Smith’s
talents could have been put to better use, and the gags that
Martin attempts to pull by himself often fall flat. Aided
by perfect lighting and spectacular wardrobes for Smith and
Union, the “good” actors all look good, and the bad guys sport
sinister five o’clock shadows and furtive eyes, when they
aren’t wearing sunglasses.
Bad Boys II is, yes, the ultimate triumph of style
over substance, at least until the next Michael Bay movie
comes along. The movie’s many beautiful action sequences lack
a larger context to place themselves in, making their viewing
an ephemeral pleasure. The movie probably keeps such a white-knuckle
pace to distract the audience from its vapidity. Another flaw
is the stereotypical raving drug dealer antagonist. At the
movie’s lengthy two-and-a-half hour running time, it would
have been nice to have a bit more character insight so that
his downfall would bring some personal satisfaction for the
audience. Most importantly for some, Will Smith does not take
off his shirt until the very end of the movie, and even then
it does not approach the glory of the famous scene in the
original Bad Boys. Bad Boys II has to be seen in theaters
to get the most out of it; there it will provide a beautiful,
but flawed movie experience.
—Woodrow Bogucki
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
