Movie Reviews: Bad Boys 2
   
 



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Studio:
     Columbia Pictures (2 hr. 30 min.)
Plot:
     Two Miami hot shot narcotics detectives are assigned to a high-tech task force investigating the flow of designer ecstasy into the city.
Cast:
     Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jordi Molla, Gabrielle Union, Peter Stormare
Rating:
     R
Bottom Line:
     *

Coverage:
by
Leah Bluntschli

"Bad Boys" (Martin Lawrence) and (Will Smith) are back — and worse than ever.

Lawrence plays Marcus Barnett, a member of the Miami police department who starts to question his partnership with reckless Mike Lowry (Smith), while they pursue notorious drug lord Johnny Tapia (Jordi Moll).

Action movies usually have good guys and bad guys. It’s a given. But "Bad Boys II" gives us more than we would ever ask for. We get sleazy Russians, greasy Cubans, crazy Haitians (who occasionally have Jamaican accents?), and filthy rednecks, all serving to demonize their respective cultures. Wonderful. They are all so evil, twisted, rabid and sneering that it is apparently acceptable to shoot them off the face of the earth without question or thought.

There may be a vast difference between how the good and the bad are depicted, but the good guys are so completely careless towards human life that it’s hard to pick who to cheer for. The amount of damage Mike and Marcus cause on the streets of Miami could rival Godzilla’s rampage of Tokyo, and it apparently starts to scar Marcus’ psyche. Oh, really? How could a constant spray of blood possibly affect you? But the only person who really seems to get angry about it is police Capt. Howard (Joe Pantolino) who’s probably angry to be in this movie.

Maybe I’m just getting older, but the only time I expect (and tolerate) this much blood and guts is in a war movie. For plain entertainment purposes, it’s just tasteless and unnecessary. "Bad Boys II" was like "Saving Private Ryan" meets Miami — except with a larger body count. Let me put it this way: the action sequences produced enough bullets to fill a swimming pool.

With both Will Smith and Martin Lawrence starring in this movie, I expected to enjoy their performances as actors, a few jokes, and at least laugh a little. But the comic relief was constantly placed too close to someone’s gruesome death, and I couldn’t find the humor. Someone gets a bullet in the neck, but it’s supposed to be funny because Marcus gets shot in the butt? The aforementioned drug lord blows one of his henchmen’s brains out, immediately denies it to his mother, who believes him, and that’s supposed to be hilarious? That is a sicker sense of humor than I will ever understand.

I like both Smith and Lawrence. But I wouldn’t recommend this movie, not only because of the predictable plot, the cheesy script, the confusing action, the unrealistic stunts, and the fact that the whole premise is a total cliché, but also because it went way too long. Two and a half hours too long. You’ll see. Oh, wait, don’t bother.

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