Bad Boys II

December 9, 2004

Rated: R Runtime: 144 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Is it ever possible to have too much action in one movie? Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer really put that question to the test with Bad Boys II. It is nearly two and a half hours of non-stop shoot outs, explosions, and car chases interrupted only occasionally by the brief pause to allow the characters to chip in some one liners.

Bad Boys II

All of the key characters are back from the original Bad Boys movie. Will Smith returns as Mike Lowery the ultra suave trust fund baby who gets his testosterone fix working as a cop. Martin Lawrence is also back as his partner Marcus Burnett, the family man who is anything but suave and somewhat neurotic. Since we already know all of these people and their relationships, the movie doesn’t spent much time on character building. That leaves more time to blow stuff up! The only significant new character is Marcus’ sister played by Gabrielle Union.

There is a story here to at least make an attempt at lacing all of the shootouts and chases together. We have Cubans and Russians pushing ecstacy into Miami and illegal drug money out. Mike and Marcus are out to bust the kingpin. Yes, it’s truly that thin. There is a sideline involving the sister, but we wont go into that due to our non-spoiler policy. Trust us though, it doesn’t take away hardly any time from the explosions.

Forget the story, this is an action movie. The action is excellent and the wise cracking dialog mixed in with it is exactly as you would expect. Even the blatent cgi effects were done well enough to not be annoying. We do have some complaints about the movie though. The editing is horrible, there’ll be times where you’re not sure exactly who they’re chasing, we feel the editor just left us to sit back and watch the eye candy. We normally do not have a problem with that, but at 2.5 hours you’d think they’d spend at least a little of that time on continuity and logic. We’d also like to put a competent stunt man behind the wheel of the $180,000 Ferrari so we could see it more than 2-3 seconds at a time instead of quick cuts.

Bad Boys II is mindless and even sometimes tasteless. It serves no purpose other than to try to fill up theaters with summer blockbuster clouds looking for mind numbing amounts of expensive cars involved in chases, and wisecracking heros shooting up bad guys by the dozen. It is filled with so much eye candy that it is guaranteed to positively rot your brain. Consequently, we loved it, we give it a strong 4 stars. With some better editing and at least a feeble attempt at giving it a real storyline it might’ve hit 5 stars.

Posted by MFG Staff | Filed Under 4 Stars, Action, Gabrielle Union, Jordi Molla, Martin Lawrence, Peter Stormare, R, Theatrical, Will Smith