Jonah Naplan June 7, 2024
If Tom Cruise is still running at 61, Vin Diesel is still driving at 56, and Harrison Ford is still cracking the whip at 81, it makes perfect sense that Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, at 55 and 59, respectively, would be up for doing another “Bad Boys” movie. After the pre-pandemic success of the excellent “Bad Boys for Life” in early 2020, it’s not surprising that directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah would be game for another ride four years later, too. And acting as a direct sequel to its predecessor, the new “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is mostly satisfactory despite taking few actual risks and playing things frustratingly safe for the majority of its runtime. Though the film will not attract any novice fans to the franchise, those who were already dedicated will surely have a good time, even if the movie doesn’t give them anything new.
It’s been interesting to watch how the “Bad Boys” franchise has evolved in ways both rudimentary and advanced. The Michael Bay-directed original from 1995 is a blast by the principle that it’s so simple and straightforward yet so exciting and so funny, mostly because of the spiky chemistry between its two leads. The second movie from 2003, however, is what the modern generation would term as “actual brainrot,” a film stuffed with violence without consequence, tasteless sex jokes, racist remarks, and all the Bay-isms you can think of. The fact that “Bad Boys for Life,” 17 whole years later, turned out to be so good, having completely reinvented the franchise via two new creative minds, is a small miracle. This series has been at both the top of the genre and the very bottom of it simultaneously. That “Ride or Die” falls only somewhere in the middle is a franchise first. It picks up right where “For Life” left off (and, admittedly, that’s really the only one you need to have seen to understand everything that’s going on here), opening with Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) speeding around Miami to get to Mike’s wedding to Christine (Melanie Liburd). At the reception, Marcus suffers a lethal heart attack, calling to mind a similar first act tragedy from “For Life,” when Mike got shot, even though this one has much goofier and much more portentous intentions. While in a coma, Marcus is spoken to by the ghost of Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano), who tells him stuff like “this is not your time,” and “a storm is coming,” foreshadowing the plot which will soon be set into motion.
A cartel goon named McGrath (Eric Dane) has framed the deceased Cap. Howard by hacking into his bank account and making it seem as though he had been fraternizing with and buying drugs from local plugs. In an effort to clear his name, Marcus and Mike break the latter’s son, Armando (Jacob Scipio), out of prison, hoping he can provide them insider knowledge on the players involved. There appears to be many on both sides, both on the surface and underneath all the layers: Lockwood (Ioan Gruffudd) is a candidate for Miami mayor who might be harboring some dangerous secrets, and his girlfriend Rita (Paola Núñez, reprising her role from the last movie) has taken Howard’s place as the police captain, while Howard’s daughter Judy (Rhea Seehorn) and granddaughter Callie (Quinn Hemphill) are seeking vengeance for his murder by the hands of Armando in “For Life.” Members of AMMO, Dorn (Alexander Ludwig) and Kelly (Vanessa Hudgens), also return, joining the lineup alongside Marcus’s son-in-law Reggie (Dennis Greene), who might just completely steal the show in a key moment of action.
With all these pieces and characters, it’s easy to see how the script by Chris Bremner and Will Beall could become so effortlessly crowded and messy, and it eventually does, especially in a clunky second act that feels overly processed but ultimately safe, forgetting to highlight the franchise’s best qualities. For the most part, this is a movie that takes few creative risks, allowing the greatest hits collection to do all the heavy lifting. Sure, it’s always fun to watch Smith and Lawrence bicker, but the duo isn’t nearly as funny this time around, and their dialogue exchanges can sometimes feel painfully stale. On the other end of the stick, this film acknowledges that neither one of them have the physical abilities they once possessed, so the action sequences tend to focus on the younger cast members in an effort to set them up as potential “legacy heroes” who could carry on the franchise.
About those action sequences—“Ride or Die” continues the grand tradition of its predecessor by employing insanely bonkers, over-the-top action which overwhelms the silver screen. In a completely different mode from Michael Bay’s pictures, it’s all thoughtful and stylized, laid out by cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert, and expertly cut together by editors Dan Lebental and Asaf Eisenberg. An early scene in a nightclub is frenetically composed, emphasizing the urgency of the sequence, while the climactic set piece, which finds all the major characters shooting at each other at an abandoned amusement park/gator farm is a technical highlight, turning the movie into both a thriller and a screwball creature feature.
What this movie lacks, however, is a credible backdrop to any of this action. “Bad Boys for Life” was great in that the stakes felt personal and emotionally realized, but here the motivation just seems to exist only for the sake of us having a movie at all. The villain, too, is one of the most underwritten and forgettable of the whole year, a character whose main purpose is to check off the orthodox narrative boxes just because the movie needs a physical antagonist for such analog protagonists. “Ride or Die” is saved by the dedicated performances and kinetic energy of its two leads who are more than open to anything the directors throw at them. Their adventures as fugitives wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if Smith and Lawrence weren’t so charismatic, even if their trademark quips do seem noticeably tamped-down this time around.
And yet, all that to say, it’s still a good time at the movies because there’s just enough care for the audience and disregard for logic and self-seriousness that the film ends up working on an entertainment level alone. I’ve analyzed the “Bad Boys” movies on grounds that they’re basically a more mature (and often better) version of the “Fast & Furious” franchise, and this one in particular repeats similar themes about the importance of family—which could mean both blood relatives and close friends—riding till the end despite old age, and staying true to the mission because it’s ultimately saving someone in jeopardy. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” still manages to work because its mission is so simple: it wants to entertain. And even though a riskier movie might have gone about that in a more intriguing way, it does get the job done nonetheless. Color me satisfied to confirm that I wouldn’t mind if we got two or three more of these over the next few years.
Now playing in theaters.