FROM ‘BAD BOYS’ TO WORSE
Bombastic, over-the-top ‘Ride or Die’ a cruddy entry in buddy-cop franchise
Arriving in theaters nearly three decades after Will Smith and Martin Lawrence proved to be a hilariously likable duo in the original “Bad Boys” and four years after the entertaining, midlife-crisis threequel, the bombastic and cartoonishly over-thetop “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is one loud misfire.
It’s like we’re watching the Big Book of Action Movie Clichés come to life, with so many tropes and overly familiar characters and plot developments crammed into the mix that we half-expect Smith and Lawrence to stop during the shootout sequence in the obligatory Abandoned Theme Park to look into the camera and wink at us.
No such luck. Smith and Lawrence are seasoned pros who still have an easy, bestfriend chemistry, and the directors Adil & Bilal deliver sparkling visuals of the sparkling Miami locale, but the screenplay for “Ride or Die” is a howler that awkwardly careens from sitcom-level banter to extended, bloodspattered mayhem to cheap melodrama.
“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” kicks off with Smith’s Mike Lowrey and Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett roaring through the streets of Miami (with an amusing detour at a convenience store) to Mike’s wedding to Melanie Liburd’s Christine.
Marcus suffers a serious health episode at the reception, and he nearly dies — but just when it seems as if we’re going to lose him (which is not going to happen because then the movie would be “Bad Boy” singular), Marcus has a betweenworlds meetup with the dead Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano), who actually tells him, “It’s not your time.”
In a storyline so tired it needs to take a long nap, the beloved Captain Howard is posthumously framed for being in cahoots with a powerful drug cartel, and the evidence is pretty damning — but Mike and Marcus vow to clear Howard’s name and take down the ex-Army Ranger-turned-cartel-leader named Banker (a snarling and very well-tanned Eric Dane) who is behind the frame-up.
The only one who can ID Banker is Mike’s son Armando (Jacob Scipio), who as you might recall from “Bad Boys for Life” is a drug-dealing assassin who gunned down Captain Howard and is in a maximum-security prison. In a sequence that combines (aka rips off) “Con Air” and “The Fugitive,” Mike and Marcus and Armando find themselves on the run, with all three of them wanted by the authorities, not to mention every hardcore thug in Miami, thanks to the $5 million bounty placed on their heads.
In between some fastpaced shootouts, including a truly clever sequence viewed mostly through the lenses of Ring cameras, and another scene in which it feels like we’re in a first-person video game (we can see the gun at the bottom of the frame), “Ride or Die” crams in a number of new characters. Rhea Seehorn from “Better Call Saul” is U.S. Marshall Judy Howard, who is in charge of bringing in Marcus, Mike and Armando, and get this: Judy has extra incentive, because she just happens to be the daughter of Captain Howard, who was killed by Armando! The usually terrific Tiffany Haddish has a terribly unfunny cameo as a character who makes no sense.
“Ride or Die” asks us to buy into a possible redemption storyline for Armando, which is a tough sell, what with him being a drugdealing, stone-cold killer and all. By that point, either you’ve placed your sense of logic in a nice little box at the door and you’re in this for the sheer dumb entertainment value, or you’re lamenting the fact that Mike and Marcus are stuck in this convoluted mess.