Bad Boys II (2003)

Alan:

Ebert: Rolling Stone: Zero Stars TV Guide:

Warning, minor plot points revealed!

Action, action, action, action.  The summer of 2003 is like a baseball game where every swing is a home run.  This is not to say that it's tedious or repetitive.  I love action films and my love for them is insatiable.  There is no such thing as too many car chases, two-handed gunfights or giant explosions.  Bad Boys II seems to share my philosophy.  For perhaps the first time ever, a movie has been made that is basically just one big two and a half hour action sequence!

Unlike some of the films this summer that now incorporate digital effects into the action sequences, this film is basically old-school in it's stunts and effects.  When they want to throw a car at Will Smith, they actually throw a car at him.  When they blow up a drug Czar's villa, they really do blow up a huge mansion.  I loved all the digital sequences in Matrix Reloaded, Terminator 3, Charlie's Angels, X-Men 2 and Hulk but I also appreciate the traditional steel smashing, glass crashing, bullets flying, smoke filled explosions of yore.  

What's the story being told in Bad Boys II?  There isn't really a plot, it's more of a theme.  Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence), as you recall from the first Bad Boys movie, are narcotics detectives who are a lot like Murtaugh and Riggs from the Lethal Weapon series.  Mike is a rich guy action junky who dresses like a model, drives fancy cars, and has a quick wit as well as lightening fast reflexes.  Marcus, his trusty partner and sidekick, is a neurotic goofball, who's on the verge of "getting a transfer" off the force or out of the division or something to get away from Mike but always comes through in the final scene with a dead on head shot to save his partner from the bad guy.  The bad guy this time is a Cuban drug lord who is sneaking a bunch of tainted Ecstasy into the U.S. in coffins and then refilling the coffins with cash to send back to Cuba to finance the building of his giant mansion and continue funding his cartel.  Oh, and Marcus has a sexy sister played by Gabrielle Union who is a DEA agent also after the same Cuban bad guy and she is starting to develop a relationship behind Marcus's back with his partner Mike.  

It doesn't really matter what the story is though because it's easy to tell who's the good guys and who's the bad guys and the fun is watching them shoot it out and chase each other all over Miami and Cuba.    If you need anything else then this is not the movie for you.  

As I said, there's not a lot of special effects like the ones that we've grown accustomed to over the summer.  There's a new super-cool freeway chase with tons of crashes and gunfights like the ones in Matrix and T3.  In fact this is becoming one of the themes of the summer - "The extended action packed car chase on the freeway scene."  This time the bad guys take control of one of those car transport trucks to chase Marcus's sister and then release the cars into traffic as Mike and Marcus chase them down in Mike's Ferrari.  It's a awesome scene.  There's also some great John Woo-type two handed gun battles with  KKK Members, Russian Gangsters, Rasta Gangsters, Drug Lord employees/family members and a few 100 troops from the Cuban military.  We get to see helicopters chasing boats, fancy private jets, cool new sports cars, custom SUV's, hot-rod street racers, and one of the big scenes at the end of the film, before they blow up that giant mansion that the drug Kingpin is building, features a Hummer chase through a shanty town of cocaine labs.  

The actors all do well with their now familiar roles.  Will Smith is cool as usual as Mike.  His arrogance and self assured attitude make for a character that you know will escape every situation without a scratch or a stain on his suit.  Jittery Marcus is the comedy relief who constantly murmurs the mantra of his anger management therapist while complaining about Mike and his "Ride together, Die together" attitude.  Joe Pantoliano (Cypher from The Matrix) is funny as the police Captain who has to yell at his detectives for causing such a ruckus every time they try to catch a bad guy.  This is a standard role in all buddy cop pictures that screenwriters never get tired of including.  Peter Stormare (the pancake-guy from Fargo) is always entertaining when he plays a Russian villain.  For some reason Black Flag frontman and punk philosopher Henry Rollins plays the part of the drug task force leader.  Gabrielle Union is fine as Marcus's sister and DEA agent Theresa Burnett.  She is smoking hot in the bikini scene with my favorite guy in the film, Cuban Drug Czar Hector "Johnny" Tapia, played by Jordi Mollà.  This guy was a fabulous and amusing super villain and I hope we will see him in other American movies.  Every scene with him was fun to watch. 

Basically, Bad Boys II is the very definition of an empty-headed summer popcorn movie.  It's entertaining, and definitely provides the bang for your 7-9 bucks.  It's an over-the-top action fest that reminds me in these waning days of summer that the best part of a fireworks display is the grand finale.