Franchise Flashback: BAD BOYS

Are Smith and Lawrence an iconic buddy duo?

I’d originally planned to do a Franchise Friday on the Bad Boys franchise, but timing issues prohibited me from viewing and writing about it last Friday. So, we’re calling it “Franchise Flashback” this month, and I’ll be back with a review of Bad Boys: Ride or Die on Friday.  

Redford and Newman. De Niro and Grodin. Gibson and Glover. 

Lovitz and Carvey? 

That was the original plan for Bad Boys, originally written as a script called Bulletproof Hearts. The SNL personalities were fairly popular at that point, and someone at Disney thought it might be good to pair them up as cops in a movie helmed by up-and-coming music video director Michael Bay. According to some reports, it got as far as a screen test before Carvey dropped out and the project shifted gears. 

Bay apparently thought the two goofballs might not be able to hold the screen in an action-heavy movie (he was probably right) and instead shifted his focus to two younger TV stars. Martin Lawrence was the lead on his own self-titled sitcom on Fox and his standup career was white hot. Will Smith was holding his own on his popular NBC comedy; a year later, he’d become the world’s biggest movie star in Independence Day. 

Bad Boys was released in early April of 1995, and it was a surprise hit, topping the box office two weeks in a row and ultimately earning $140 million worldwide. Not a world-changer by any means, but it primed the pump for bigger things down the road, including Smith’s ascent to superstardom and Bay’s leap to megamovies like The Rock and Armageddon. It’s also proven an oddly durable franchise. Although it has less movies than Mission: Impossible and The Fast and the Furious, it’s been around longer, and it’s still oddly popular. Bad Boys for Life was the highest-grossing film of 2020 (with the world’s biggest asterisk, of course), and this week’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die is the latest hope to buoy a struggling box office. 

I don’t know that a Lovitz and Carvey franchise would still be kicking around 30 years later. 

So, before shit gets real (again) this weekend, let’s look back at the first three Bad Boys movies and see how this series has managed to last this long. 

Bad Boys (1995) 

Looking at Bad Boys with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see it as Ground Zero for two huge Hollywood careers. But back in 1995, it was just another buddy comedy – during a time when we still had one more Lethal Weapon to come – starring two bickering comedians. 

The story is standard genre stuff; Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) and Mike Lowery (Smith) are Miami drug cops hunting for heroin stolen from police headquarters. While investigating, a police informant is murdered, and a witness, Julie (Tèa Leoni), is left behind. Julie contacts Mike, but he’s indisposed, and so family man Marcus must pretend to be the smooth bachelor to gain her trust and help the duo crack the case. Sprinkle in a few gunfights and car chases, and you have a typical entry in one of the more common subgenres of the ‘80s and ‘90s. 

But where the buddy-cop movie was starting to fade from popularity in 1995 – it was ubiquitous enough to spawn a spoof, National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1 two years earlier – Bad Boys feels like a fresh spin, with much of that credit due to its two leads. It was rare at the time — it, unfortunately, still is — to see a mainstream studio movie with two young Black men as the stars. Most buddy-cop movies had either two white guys at the helm – Stakeout, Point Break – or, more commonly, the racial matchup seen in Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours and The Last Boy Scout. Putting two Black leads front and center not only is a diversity win, but it forces the relationship between the two to be based on something more than racial tension. 

The throughline through this series and its enduring appeal is the love-hate relationship between Marcus and Mike. The two bicker like siblings; Mike gets pissy when Marcus eats in his car. Marcus complains that Mike’s adrenaline-junkie work ethic and playboy lifestyle complicate his own family life and keep him from having “quality time” with his wife (Theresa Randle). The movie’s first scene finds the duo driving around in Mike’s Porsche, screaming at each other after Marcus drops a bucket of fries down the seats. Their bickering is interrupted by carjackers; Mike and Marcus keep fighting, and use their conflict to blindside their attackers and get the upper hand. The dynamic is solidified right there – these two will constantly be at each other's throats, but it’s the kind of fighting you can only do with your best friend. 

It’s funny to look back at Bad Boys now and see that it’s Marcus, not Mike, who’s the ostensible lead. Lawrence has the Danny Glover role; he’s the cautious family man just trying to stay alive and unruffled. It’s Marcus whose life is thrown into disarray because of Mike’s impulsive choices, and who has to rearrange everything – and lie to his wife – to keep the ruse going in order to keep Julie’s trust. Martin was the larger, more successful sitcom at the time, and Lawrence the more established actor and comic, so it makes sense that the movie would give him the bigger role. 

And yet, you can already feel Smith taking his place on deck to become Hollywood’s biggest movie star. Lawrence is often very funny – and I think he gets better as an actor as the series continues – but you can see him working (often, very loudly) to sell every joke. Meanwhile, Smith is all swagger. He radiates charisma from the moment he appears on screen – it helps that Bay gives him all the cool clothes and slow-motion hero shots – and he’s effortlessly funny. When he’s offscreen for an extended period in the middle of the film, the movie noticeably lags without his confident cool. But Smith doesn’t treat this like a one-man show; he has strong chemistry with Lawrence, both in their comedic moments and the bits that show the bond between the two partners. 

The duo is so good that they almost obscure the fact that every other single character is one dimensional. Leoni’s acerbic presence is a nice change of pace from the typical damsel in distress, but Julie doesn’t have a character. She’s just a plot device, and she’s written very inconsistently; she’s introduced as a friend who “likes to party” well enough that she accompanies a drug dealer’s mansion. But she’s also terrified and aloof, unless the movie needs her to be sarcastic or – in the movie’s most cringeworthy scene – put the moves on Marcus. She’s scared to death of being killed but also complains that Marcus and Mike never bring her on their stakeouts. But she’s more of a character than Marg Helgenberger’s IA official, created just to be a ballbusting plot instigator and Tcheky Karyo’s Fouchet, whose sole villainous trait seems to be that he’s European. But I will give props to Joe Pantoliano who, as always, steals the show as the ulcer-plagued, highly stressed captain. 

This was Bay’s feature debut after a career of flashy commercials and music videos. And, in the tradition of other filmmakers recruited by producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, he brings a style that overwhelms any substance. Every scene is shot in heightened colors with quick cuts; every movement is framed to look like the coolest scene ever. Miami sizzles in deep oranges and blues, and every action sequence is loud, chaotic, bloody and violent. At this point, Bay isn’t yet equipped to helm an iconic action scene, but you can sense both the talent that would lead to the following year’s The Rock and quickly devolve into his maximalist approach in later films. 

That results in a film that is often very funny and very exciting without actually being very good. Lawrence and Smith’s dynamic is propulsive, enlivening what would otherwise be a paint-by-numbers action-comedy, and Bay’s adrenaline-laced direction results in several dynamic fights and chases, particularly the climactic airport shootout. The visual style often makes it feel like there’s more to the movie than there really is; when Bay circles around Smith and Lawrence late in the film, it’s instantly iconic, and you can feel Smith’s star being born. But it’s a memorable shot in a movie full of disjointed scenes, paper-thin characters and an overly convoluted plot. It also doesn’t help that everyone is constantly yelling at each other, and the heightened reality of every shot makes it feel like the film is visually screaming in your face as well. 

Bad Boys is the quintessential first movie, both for Bay and for Smith as a star. There’s enough unique on display to see the seeds of what would follow – for good and for ill – but everyone is still fledgling enough that it’s not fully formed. 

That would not be the case eight years later. 

Bad Boys II (2003)

Nothing sums up Bad Boys II better than the fact that Michael Bay’s “directed by” credit appears over a shot of a burning cross. 

By this point, Bay had developed a reputation. He’d delivered one of the ‘90s’ best action movies in The Rock and the biggest hit of 1998 in Armageddon. In the process, he became known for going big and loud, but not particularly deep. Perhaps hoping to change critics’ minds and prove he could deliver emotion along with the bombast, in 2001 he directed Pearl Harbor, an interminable love triangle set in the early days of World War II. The film was lambasted by critics and a commercial failure. People didn’t want to see Bay turn respectable. 

I’ve always had a theory that Bad Boys II was Bay’s middle finger to those people. This film is not just loud and violent; it’s tasteless, ugly and mean, even as there are several action sequences that could be ranked among the best of the 2000s. It’s so amoral and crass that it should be the first movie charged with crimes against humanity, and yet I also can’t deny that if ever a movie summed up Bay as an auteur, it’s this one. Some people herald Bad Boys II as the best of the franchise; others as the worst. It’s certainly the most. 

Whereas Bad Boys was a fairly mid-budget, conventional buddy cop movie, Bad Boys II comes out of the gate bigger and louder. Its opening credits are dedicated to following a complicated, international drug-smuggling operation. Its first action scene takes place at a KKK rally, with Marcus and Mike undercover in white sheets. The gunfight lingers on bullets ripping through bad guys’ heads – and in one slow-motion shot, through Martin Lawrence’s ass cheeks – and much of the “humor” comes from the glee the two cops have at shooting the racist villains. And it’s just a hint of what’s to come. 

I don’t know that I could explain the “plot” of this one, as it’s a nonsensical careening of several threads and excuses to detour for puerile humor, over-the-top action and graphic violence. Marcus and Mike investigate another international crime ring. Somehow, this dovetails with an undercover operation that Marcus’ sister Sydney (Gabrielle Union) is heading up – meanwhile, she’s also carrying on a relationship with Mike that he keeps hidden from Marcus, who is already having second thoughts about working with his loose-cannon partner. This means more bickering, more domestic squabbles, bigger car chases, and bloodier gunfights.

By this point, Smith was firmly established as the king of the box office, and he’s the center of the show this time out. His swagger and cool are pumped up, he’s given the film’s love story and personal arc, and Lawrence is largely just left screaming and doing shtick. But Bay dials up the duo’s bickering, and Marcus and Mike seem more antagonistic toward each other than in the previous film. Before the climax, the only time they really unite is to try and scare off a suitor for Marcus’ daughter in a scene that traffics in every racial stereotype and just has the two coming off like assholes.  

Smith and Lawrence are still the focal points, but even they feel overwhelmed by Bay, whose style smothers the entire movie. The action sequences benefit – there’s a chase involving cars tumbling off a transport that is just as bombastic and cool as anything in the Fast and Furious franchise, and a shootout in a Miami mansion where the camera keeps spinning around the fighters. But Bay’s approach is to crank up the volume at every level. Nearly every character screams their dialogue, the camera swirls and zooms in the simplest of shots, and every explosion and gunshot is ratcheted up for maximum impact and carnage. For two and a half hours, it never slows down or shuts up. It’s deafening, exhausting and unpleasant. 

Under it all is just a juvenile, mean-spirited tone. It’s not just that it appears that Marcus and Mike no longer like each other; there’s a hostility and contempt for the audience under nearly every scene. It’s as if, after the Pearl Harbor debacle, Bay is shouting “you think I make garbage? Well, I’ll show you garbage.” And that’s how we get a movie where every woman is ogled over and fetishized, every villain gets a death that revels in carnage, and the film stops to linger on the giant breasts of a dead body. In fact, Bad Boys II has more desecration of corpses than you’d expect in an action-comedy. In one long sequence, Mike fishes around inside cadavers to find drugs, the soundtrack amplifying every “squish” for maximum discomfort. And a chase involving a mortuary truck climaxes with several dead bodies slamming into the road, their heads spinning off to punctuate the “comedy.” And I haven’t even mentioned the scene where, mid-surveillance, Marcus stares in awe at rats having sex — I don’t know that that’s offensive so much as thuddingly unfunny and stupid (that said, the scene where Marcus inadvertently consumes Ecstasy gives Lawrence an opportunity to be really funny). The film’s Cuba-set climax features extended shots of the heroes driving an SUV over a shanty town, destroying homes for the city’s lower-class citizens. But the film never focuses on that because, hey, ‘splosions. 

I saw Bad Boys II in theaters and liked it at the time. Two decades later, I was stunned by how unpleasant and acrid the viewing experience was. The film made $273 million worldwide and was namechecked by no greater an action movie than Hot Fuzz, but I can’t imagine how anyone watches this one without reaching for an Advil or praying for forgiveness. 

Bad Boys for Life (2020) 

Despite the massive success of Bad Boys II, the franchise took a long time to get a third entry off the ground. Michael Bay went on to bigger and dumber things — most famously, directing five awful Transformers movies. Will Smith continued to heat up the box office and chase awards success until his star began cooling in the 2010s. And Martin Lawrence largely disappeared from the screen after 2011’s third entry in the Big Momma’s House franchise. 

So a third Bad Boys, nearly twenty years after the last film, seemed a desperate plea for Smith to regain his box office appeal and for Lawrence to make a comeback. But without the series’ director and his requisite dose of “Bayhem,” some wondered what would be the point. 

So, it was a genuine shock when Bad Boys for Life premiered in January 2020 and became the best-reviewed film in the series as well as its highest-grossing entry, bringing in $426 million worldwide and becoming the top film at the U.S. box office for the year – mostly because theaters would shut down for two months later, but still. 

The film finds an older Marcus and Mike still keeping an eye on the Miami streets as old cops. Mike still sees himself as bulletproof and lives in the fastlane. Marcus just became a grandfather and is thinking of retiring. It’s not just that he wants to slow down; it’s that, as he says, maybe it’s time to stop being “bad boys” and start being “good men” (yes, the movie comments on how ridiculous that line is). But a ruthless cartel leader makes things personal for Mike, who teams with a squad of young recruits to bring her down. 

Watching the movie again, it’s clear that the things that we assumed might make a third Bad Boys movie unbearable are actually its strengths. After two movies in which the partners often seemed at odds, the chemistry shifts to find them in a healthier routine. They still bicker, but this time it really is like an old married couple. The duration between films and the aging of the characters (well, mostly Lawrence; Smith is still well preserved) gives Marcus’ desire to slow down a bit more resonance. Plus, the real-life baggage the actors bring helps the film. Smith – still a year or two off from The Slap – was still well-liked, but his films were struggling; you can’t help but look at Mike’s middle-age swagger as a barrier that will need to come down. And Lawrence had been gone from screens for so long that audiences were happy to have him back; and as Marcus revels in retirement and older age, Lawrence might be the funniest he’s been in this series. 

Lawrence and Smith still have strong chemistry, and with Bay out of the way to steal the show, the film feels more focused on their characters, giving them internal dilemmas instead of just puppeting them through the motions of a cop story. They’re still funny together and young enough to still sell the action sequences, and the story’s introduction of young recruits props them up when they might be getting a bit tired. 

Adil el Arbi and Bilall Fallah take over directing duties. Their newness on the scene is likely why this film’s budget is $90 million – $40 million less than Bad Boys II. But that results in a film that feels more back-to-basics and character focused than the bloated second entry. And while Arbi and Fallah lack Bay’s love for extreme scale, they bring a fresh style to the action, incorporating drone shots and constantly moving cameras. But they also hold onto a shot longer than Bay liked to, and the action moves with more energy and a clearer sense of geography. Only in the final act, a showdown in Mexico City involving fire and falling helicopters, does the CGI and scale seem to overwhelm them. 

The story, like any in this franchise, is a mess, involving an escaped cartel boss (Kate del Castillo) who commands her son (Jacob Scipio) to go on a vengeance-inspired killing spree across Miami. At one point, Mike is critically injured – enough so that he codes out on the table, but apparently not serious enough to prevent him from jumping back in the fray to find his would-be assassin. Marcus retires and un-retires, the young recruits distrust the Bad Boys and then quickly trust them. Like any entry in this series, the story is a bit of an incoherent mess. But it finds enough emotional stakes for Mike and Marcus to keep fans invested and give Lawrence and Smith something to chew on. 

Three films in and 25 years after the first Bad Boys, the series isn’t interested in gaining new fans, and largely plays the hits. And fans should be pleased. The banter between Mike and Marcus is still funny and never as shrill as in the previous films. The action is exciting and inventive. The villain’s ties back to Mike are intriguing and allow Smith to do some solid emotional work. All this, and some classic Joey Pants moments. It’s a cliché, but with the Bad Boys series, it’s true: third time’s a charm. 

Come back Friday to see if the magic’s still there for Bad Boys: Ride or Die.