Hell is a topic discussed - “darkness that swallows you whole.” We are a long way from the time Burnett was shot in the keister by his partner.
A crisis forces Burnett to make a vow to God. (Yes, there are colonoscopy jokes in this film.) Lowrey is having second thoughts about one flame who got away: Paola Nunez, who plays a fellow cop. “Bad Boys” only works when the bickering cops are center stage.Īge has taken its toll: Burnett is a grandfather now who needs glasses and is eyeing retirement, while Lowrey is unsettled, still a playboy but a wistful one who colors his goatee black with hair dye.
So often in the new film they are separate, dealing with their own stuff. There are sly references to the previous films - a private conversation between the detectives is accidentally broadcast as in the second film and rats make an encore performance in the new one - but the filmmakers have forgotten that what makes this franchise work: The interaction of Smith and Lawrence in stressed environments. Joe Pantoliano returns as the Pepto-swigging detectives’ boss and DJ Khaled has a small role as well as putting together the lively soundtrack. An understated Vanessa Hudgens plays a cool cop and Kate Del Castillo is on the opposite side in more than one sense, playing an absolutely unhinged cartel boss wife who uses witchcraft. We add cliches - a team of smart, young, sassy cops - on top of some twists worthy of Shakespeare.Īdil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah have taken over from Michael Bay in the director’s chair but the look of the film essentially mimics its predecessors, with saturated colors, quick cuts, muscular stunts and lots of pretty women.
Someone is out for revenge and they are exposing skeletons in Lowrey’s closet, uncovering a backstory inconsistent to the Lowrey we have come to know. “Bad Boys for Life” doesn’t have drugs - if you don’t count Viagra jokes - but instead has a murder plot to assassinate everyone connected with an old drug case Lowrey worked on before he teamed up with Burnett. Eight years later came “Bad Boys II,” a slicker flick with slow-mo sideways shooting, a feisty Gabrielle Union in a white suit, the annihilation of many cars and many, many ecstasy pills. The first film in the franchise hit theaters 25 years ago, giving us foreign baddies with beepers, Tea Leoni in little skirts, many, many bricks of heroin and an exploding airplane hanger. But do we really want Burnett to straight-faced tell a Buddhist parable about a horse and then ask Lowrey about how he can overcome his own trauma: “Where are you going, Mike?” Smith and Lawrence are both past 50 and their characters can’t keep to the same formula of “muscle shirts and body counts,” as Burnett argues. It’s oddly flat and unfunny and has strayed so far from its gritty roots that it might be called “Bad Boys for Life Insurance.” So it’s so disappointing that “ Bad Boys for Life ” soon swerves into weird neighborhoods and gets bloated as it tries to get deep, trying to explore topics like religion, mortality, biological determinism, individual legacy and aging.