These are BAD BOYS.1 TWO.2
Smith and Lawrence, public servants paid with taxpayer dollars, then absolutely indiscriminately massacre the Klansmen using guns, explosions, a helicopter, and Henry Rollins. Which, obviously, if you have to massacre someone, make it an eager foot soldier in a white supremacist domestic terrorist organization with ties to the highest echelons of American political power working to entrench brutal inequalities and bring back slavery if they’re being honest, but also, maybe it’s better, as a rule, for the state to stay out of the massacre business? Does that make me a Republican? Or the opposite? Either way, Smith and Lawrence have a job to do, which is to stop kids on spring break from having too much fun dancing.
In the melee, Smith shoots Lawrence in his anus. Ten minutes of perfect cinema.
The movies were just kind of figuring out how to use computers in 2003, and nobody was just kind of figuring out how to use computers harder than Michael Bay. It’s tempting to say that every frame of Bad Boys II looks like a TV commercial, but truly every frame looks like a print advertisement, like those Candies ads where Jenny McCarthy’s taking a shit, shallow and glossy and tinged acid green. There are four car chases, one of which is at least fifteen minutes long. Even the most passing transitions are giddily tasteless: the camera EXPLODES out of the speedboat’s tailpipe and ZOOMS across Biscayne Bay and WHAMS down the ventilation shaft in the backward sunglasses factory and SHOOMPS into the buttcrack of a raver’s low-rise jeans and SPROINGS across her transverse colon and SQUEAKS through her appendix and AIRHORNS out her belly button and PLOPS into the Cuban drug lord’s mojito as he shoots his favorite nephew in the head while saying, “Adios, kemosabe,” or something fucking cool like that.
When faced with a choice, Bay picks “all of the above” every time. He’s like a dog in one of those obedience trials who’s like, “Obedience? I don’t know her,” and just goes buck wild on the sausages. Except instead of “obedience” it’s “having a coherent plot that holds the audience’s attention” and instead of “sausages” it’s “explosions, Ferrari chases, and how many different cool kinds of box could a gun come in.”
Which, to be clear, I support. I was twenty-one in 2003, and tasteless shit isn’t just IN my blood, IT IS MY BLOOD. I crave excess! There’s something else I crave a little bit more, though, which is all of the parts in Bad Boys II when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are yelling at each other. More of that, please, Mr. Bay! Maybe 10 percent less car-chasing, 40 percent more bickering! It’s the first rule of filmmaking: when you have Will Smith and Martin Lawrence at your disposal to do unlimited bickering, you do not NECESSARILY need to add a scene where a Humvee obliterates a Cuban shantytown, killing many hundreds of impoverished children! Smith! Lawrence! Brutally roasting each other! Make it four hours long! That’s your blockbuster! NO NEED TO GILD THE LILY, BAY.
Maybe if I understood why the Humvee was obliterating the Cuban shantytown, this diversion would feel worth it to me, but as far as I can tell, the plot of Bad Boys II is…MIAMI.
?
Here’s what happens, as best I can understand it. Martin Lawrence’s sister, Gabrielle Union, is a DEA agent (?) who has gone undercover (?) to infiltrate…something drugs. Something has something to do with the pills from the beginning, and something to do with Russians laundering (?) money (?). Unfortunately, the “bogeys” (did not write down who that was in reference to, do not remember) do a hit on Gabrielle Union’s friend (?), causing everyone to car chase for one year. A semitruck full of evil Haitians is chasing Gabrielle Union, who is chasing the bogeys (?), because they stole her Russian’s $2 million, maybe. Will Smith is chasing the semitruck in his Ferrari (for seriously SO long—HOW IS THIS FERRARI NOT FASTER THAN THE SEMITRUCK?) on the surface streets of downtown Miami, occasionally firing his assault rifle haphazardly into large crowds of civilians. People are just getting STRAIGHT-UP MURDERED. And what are they trying to track down again, $2 million? Just one of these wrongful death lawsuits is going to cost the City of Miami that much, and Will Smith has killed approximately seven thousand people at this point!! Let it go, dog!
One cool thing about this movie is it’s got all the kinds of criminals. It’s got the Russian criminals! The KKK criminals! The Haitian criminals! A Cuban guy, I think! That’s all the kinds!
The Haitians in the semitruck start dropping their cargo, which is cars, on Will Smith to get him off their tail. These Haitians will NOT stop throwing cars at Will Smith! I wish this movie would stop perpetuating the old stereotypes about Haitians constantly throwing cars.
Smith and Lawrence go back to the office where their boss (JOEY! PANTS!) yells at them for not being “subtle” and “tactical” enough (i.e., totaling twenty-two cars and a boat and uncounted human lives [never mentioned]).
Over at his weird three-quarter-scale mansion (seriously, the ceiling in this one hallway is like five feet high and it is legitimately extremely weird and nobody says anything about it, they just stoop and shuffle around???), the Cuban ecstasy lord discovers that rats are eating all his money, and then says a good line: “Carlos, this is a stupid fucking problem to have, but it is a problem.” I laughed! His henchman agrees to call an exterminator.
Meanwhile, the bad boys are
