BEFORE: It's been almost nine years since I watched the first two "Bad Boys" movies - I barely even remember what happened in them! I hope remembering the plot details of the second film is not important for watching the third movie, which came out earlier this year. This one sure came to premium cable very quickly! That's usually a bad sign, isn't it?
Vanessa Hudgens carries over from "Thirteen".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Bad Boys" (Movie #976), "Bad Boys 2" (Movie #977)
THE PLOT: Miami detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett must face off against a mother-and-son pair of drug lords who wreak vengeful havoc on their city.
AFTER: I may have watched the first two films back to back in September of 2011, but they were released eight years apart, and now here's the third film a full seventeen years after Part 2 came out in 2003. But it's been only nine years since I watched the other two, and nine is less than seventeen, or so I've been told. Standard SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen the latest entry in the "Bad Boys" franchise just yet.
Without giving much of the plot away (there's a plot?) I think somebody did a fine job here of moving the story along for the two main characters, Mike Lowrey and Marcus Bennett - you have to figure that their lives would change over the course of 17 years since the last installment, right? So Marcus has to deal with getting older, becoming a grandfather for the first time, and considering retirement to spend more time with his family. Naturally Mike doesn't react well to the possibility of their partnership ending, but hey, everything ends sometime. If a police officer has a chance to retire before the job becomes too dangerous, he should probably take that opporunity. It's clear that Martin Lawrence is getting up there in age, too, because him being semi-retired gives him a chance here to bow out of having to be involved with any stunt work. Notice that it's always Will Smith's (umm, or his stunt double?) character doing the running and the jumping, and Lawrence's character is noticably absent, or else he's made a promise to God to not shoot anybody or otherwise be violent in the future, which seems a bit too convenient.
(But this leads me to my first NITPICK POINT, which is an intended funny bit where Marcus refuses to admit that he's getting older, so he denies taking Viagra and also refuses to wear his glasses, even though it's clear that he can't shoot straight or catch something thrown at him until he finally relents and puts the glasses on. As someone who's worn eyeglasses for most of my life, there's no shame in not having perfect vision, so this bit just doesn't really land. What purpose does it serve someone to pretend that he doesn't need glasses, when this would cause him to walk around bumping into things, and also be very potentially hazardous? It's not even that funny, so why is it even a bit? It's just a way of keeping a character unimportant or useless until the plot needs him to be helpful, but there were other better ways of getting there.)
Marcus may be the family man, but in this storyline there's a relationship from Mike's past that comes back to haunt him. It seems he was involved with a Mexican drug lord's wife, back before he was teamed up with Marcus - and she's out of prison and wants revenge on everyone who put her there, including Mike Lowrey. OK, a couple of things don't really work here, the main one being that Mike is a Miami police officer, and as such he never would have been sent on an undercover assignment in Mexico. It doesn't matter if drugs from Mexico are flooding the streets of Miami, this would have been WAY out of his jurisdiction. Sorry, this is NITPICK POINT #2 - we have Interpol and DEA that work on this sort of thing, not local cops.
This druglord's wife, who's also some kind of Mexican witch or witch doctor or something, sends her son to Miami to kill everyone who had a hand in her incarceration and also her husband's arrest, from the judge on the case to the D.A., and the forensics guy, and especially Mike, the former undercover agent. There's something a little wonky here, too - like was the drug lord operating out of Mexico, or did he get arrested and tried in Miami? And if so, for God's sake, why did he come to Miami? It doesn't really work either way - did they get extradited from Mexico to Florida to stand trial, and then sent back to Mexican prison? That's just not how these things work. N.P. #3.
N.P. #4 involves how quickly Mike manages to put the pieces of the case together, in about 10 seconds of searching the internet. Which seems weird because the film just spent about an hour showing how ultra-impossible it was to figure out the criminal mastermind, since that combination of cop, judge and D.A. worked together to incarcerate several hundred people. And then Mike just kind of pieces it together in 10 seconds in front of a computer? No way, my browser takes longer than that just to load ONE WEB PAGE. Besides, Mike isn't even an internet expert, there's another guy in the squad who's the technical genius, how come HE didn't put this together? Anyway, if there's 100 criminal cases with somebody who might want revenge on exactly those four people, that's a solid start to the investigation, you take those 100 cases and you eliminate the unlikely ones until you have your answer. Doesn't anybody remember good old-fashioned detective work? Hey, that could have been something for Marcus the old-school relic to DO, instead of half-retiring and spending spa days watching telenovelas with his family.
NITPICK POINT #5 involves this special squad that's been put together, the AMMO (Advanced Miami Metro Operations) squad. They're a bit like CSI meets SWAT, using computers, forensics and advanced weaponry, and their first task is to put all these resources into finding out who's targeted Mike. And the police rules are very clear that Mike, under no circumstances, is allowed to be on this squad, because that would represent a conflict of interest. Umm, guess what happens? The Captain reasons that since Mike's going to investigate his own case renegade-style, making him a consultant to the squad is the safest thing to do, so at least he'll have some supervision and not ruin the investigation. This is a most terrible idea, it's a clear violation of police procedure, and it only leads to him having some supervision when he DOES ruin the investigation. Yeah, great idea there.
It all leads up to a showdown in Mexico City where, again, the Miami cops have no jurisdiction at all. Sure, bring the whole squad, they don't have any right to be there, either. And while they explain that Mike and Marcus can't bring their guns with them when they fly on a commercial airline, and they're seen buying new guns when they arrive in Mexico, none of that explains how the rest of the AMMO squad got to bring their guns and tech along. Yup, that's N.P. #6. While I realize you can't have a big finale with guns and explosions and super cool drones and stuff, them having all this equipment available is a big "HUH? moment. While I'm at it, the drone reminds me about N.P. #7, earlier in the film the AMMO squad uses a drone to spy on an illegal arms deal going down, and there's just no way that the perps wouldn't have seen, or at least heard, that drone spying on them from inside the same room.
Despite all of these story problems, audiences didn't seem to have the same issues with the film that I did - this is the highest-grossing film in the franchise. I guess action movie fans aren't really interested in movies making sense, they just want the flash-bang and the return of the two main characters they remember from the previous films. Originally they were talking about making both "Bad Boys 3" and "Bad Boys 4" back-to-back, but then there were a number of production delays, getting all the parties to agree on salaries and scheduling was something of a nightmare, and then when talks resumed, they later announced just one sequel and not two. So I wonder if this story somehow compressed the plot of both films into one, thus losing the potential cliffhanger at the end of Part 3 and this could also explain why the film felt so rushed, why Mike was able to figure out who was after him so damn quickly.
I think with a little more effort this could have been an entertaining and not just action-packed film, but so many sloppy, sloppy mistakes! My conscience won't allow me to score it any higher than I did.
Also starring Will Smith (last seen in "Aladdin"), Martin Lawrence (last seen in "The Beach Bum"), Alexander Ludwig (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Charles Melton, Paola Nuñez, Jacob Scipio, Kate del Castillo (last seen in "The 33"), Nicky Jam, Joe Pantoliano (last seen in "Ready to Rumble"), Theresa Randle (last seen in "Bad Boys II"), Dennis Greene (ditto), Bianca Bethune (ditto), Massi Furlan (last heard in "Murder Mystery"), Happy Anderson (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Rory Markham (last seen in "Alex Cross"), Carlos Guerrero (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker"), Ivo Nandi (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), David Shae (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Jay Amor, Eduardo Rosario, with cameos from Michael Bay, DJ Khaled (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 3").
RATING: 6 out of 10 rubber bullets
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