Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a particularly cynical Hollywood exercise. Instead of trying to create new movie stars or put new movie stars into franchise IP, moneymakers choose the most conservative safe route, of just running back the same film. Even if, say, one of the stars of your IP assaulted someone very publicly at the Oscars. It was sadly inevitable Will Smith was gonna try to resurrect his movie career, so even though its completely fitting it’s a Bad Boys movie, we’re in the hands of Hollywood’s worst tendencies for 2 hours, being force fed this “entertainment” in a soulless, shameless cash grab.
We open in Miami at Mike Lowery’s (Will Smith) wedding to his therapist, Christine (Melanie Liburd). During the festivities, Mike’s work partner Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) has a heart attack, sidelining him for a few weeks. In those weeks, a mysterious man (Eric Dane) has framed Mike and Marcus’s deceased Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano), discrediting him. In trying to clear his tracks, the man triggers messages be sent to Mike and Marcus, who inform new police Captain Rita Secada (Paola Nunez) and request the help of Mike’s imprisoned cartel kingpin son Armando Aretas (Jacob Scipio) to identify the bad guys trying to take down their old Captain.
Usually actors save a movie from its director, but that’s not the case in Ride or Die. Adil & Bilall, who directed the really good Bad Boys for Life, are back here…and saddled with just a heap of garbage. The one saving grace is the action, which the 2 Belgian directors put on their Michael Bay hats and deliver on the Bad Boys promise. In particular the last battle is a delight, with drone’s eye view of the action as we cut in between all the key players inside an abandoned amusement park. Adil & Bilall smartly devoted all their time there, because there was no saving this dumbass, recycled Fast and Furious script. Bad Boys has low leaned hard into family territory, taking bad guys in the previous film related to our heroes and making them good guys. The movie tries to shift the Marcus/Mike dynamic, making Marcus the cocksure one, which falls terribly flat, relying on Lawrence to humiliate himself for the sake of a lazy joke, basically recreating Tyrese Gibson’s “I’m invincible” bit from The Fate of the Furious. The big “twist” you should see in 3 minutes, and is so bad Adil & Bilall resolve it as quickly as possible. Even Will Smith feels like he resents he has to resort to making a crappy Bad Boys sequel and phones in his performance while he’s counting the days where he can be back at the top again. By the halfway point, I just started feeling gross I went to see Ride or Die, wasting my time with Hollywood machine crap.
There’s a lot of hand wringing right now at the horrible performance at the box office in 2024. I supremely hope Bad Boys: Ride or Die is not one the films Hollywood will point to as a big win, because if it makes a heap of money, we’re never getting any new content, and just saddled with the AI generated scripts and explosions distracting you from how cynical the whole artless exercise is. I gotta go take a shower now, y’all. Bleh.