‘Bad Boys For Life’ Satisfies
Bad Boys for Life is the third installment in the Bad Boys franchise directed by Micheal Bay and is set almost two decades after the events of the previous film. Initially, the two main characters, Mike Burnett and Mike Lowery, are shown experiencing the effects of aging and Marcus in particular is shown to have transitioned to a family-focused lifestyle through the birth of a grandson, moving away from the wild cop adventures with his hot-blooded partner Mike, and so their paths diverge. After celebrating in a club, Mike gets gunned down before Marcus’s eyes by a masked motorcycle rider, which leads Marcus to retire from the force even though Mike recovers from his wounds; he seeks revenge against the assailant while being discouraged to do so by his superiors. Through this common threat and more developments Mike and Marcus are forced to align once again for “one last ride” to take down the bad guys.
As expected of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, the dialogue starting out in the beginning was fresh and provided genuine comedic relief from the tense moments; however, later on it did grow a little stale and there were a few moments which were cringeworthy, but for the most part the jokes did a decent job of complementing the rest of the movie and the main plot. Additionally, even though “Bad Boys” is in the title and referenced many times in the movie itself, Mike feels like the main character and Marcus the comedic afterthought. The plot itself had some creative and ingenious aspects and did a good job of developing the character arcs of the main characters and letting the minor characters shine at, but it suffered from scattered illogical moments as well as too many action movie cliches, some of which are incredibly overused in similar movies (including previous Bad Boys movies), including the agent back from retirement cliche and the rogue agent cliche, to state a few. There were a few good twists in the plot, but some of them were predictable, especially in the end. The plot felt like it progressed too slow, and it definitely felt like the movie could have been achieved in the same way or better with a decently reduced screen time.
Despite shortcomings, the movie is solid and arguably the best of the franchise.