THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
When you’re in trouble, the good guys aren’t the most reliable because the Bad Boys are.
PLOT
The 1995 film follows lifelong friends Mike Lowrey & Marcus Bennett who are narcotics detectives of Miami’s Police Department. Their biggest career bust of $100 million seized heroin gets stolen from a police vault and now have 72 hours to recover it all before Internal Affairs shuts them down. Mike asks his ex girlfriend Maxine Logan (Karen Alexander) to be an informant and look for someone newly rich. As an escort, she gets hired to do work for crooked former cop Eddie Dominguez (Emmanuel Xuereb), but her madam Lois (Heather Davis) encourages her to take her roommate Julie Mott with her on the job. Dominguez’s personal party gets interrupted by his boss, French kingpin Fouchet who chooses to kill him for stealing two packages of heroin from him, originating from the same stolen from the vault. He also kills Max to eliminate witnesses but Julie is able to escape. When Mike discovers Max’s body and finds himself devastated if it all, he chooses to try investigating alone by searching for her killer. He encounters the henchman Noah, who ends up knocking him unconscious after already killing Lois. Around this time, Julie is able to call the station and ask only for Mike as she remembered Max said she trusts him. Since she never met him before, Marcus takes his identity for the sake of securing a witness. When he meets her at her apartment, he gains her trust when evading more of Fouchet’s henchmen. Mike gets caught up with the situation by the time he returns to the station. And under the order of their superior Captain Conrad Howard, they must impersonate each other for the time being. This means Mike must be pretend to be Marcus and crash at his residence where his wife and children live, while Marcus continues to take Mike’s identity by staying with Julie in Lowrey’s apartment. However, it does become hard for the partners to maintain the charade as the witness starts suspecting the truth. After going through some mugshots, Julie confirms Noah’s identity and the cop duo track him down at his hangout Club Hell. It doesn’t go smooth as Marcus would get caught up fighting another one of Fouchet’s henchman, Casper. It only gets worse when Julie chooses to follow them to personally avenge Max by shooting Noah at the nightclub. She misses and it gets his attention, causing him to go after her and the cops protecting her. During an intense car chase, Noah dies in the process and a news helicopter catches them on camera which gets posted by the next day. When Marcus recovers at the apartment, he checks in on his wife Theresa (Theresa Randle) on the phone and mistakes him to be sleeping with Mike. He goes home unbeknownst to his family to confront his partner, who assures him he wouldn’t betray him like such. During this situation, their coworkers Detectives Sanchez & Ruiz (Nestor Serrano & Julio Oscar Mechoso) arrest Fouchet’s henchmen staking out the house. The cop protagonists then confront an informant named Jojo (Michael Imperioli) who tells them a location of the drugs are being cut by Fouchet’s personal chemist. They’d miss Fouchet and the chemist on a stakeout and would have to recuperate at the apartment. The Club Hell report would upset Theresa when she sees it, because she was told by her husband he was going to a business trip in Cleveland. She goes to confront him just when Julie is there, which only confirms her previous suspicion. As Julie tries to leave, Mike assured her he wanted to tell her the truth and Marcus tells his wife the truth of his absence. Just when things get cleared up on both sides, Fouchet arrives to abduct Julie and the protagonist duo fail to prevent that. At the station, Fouchet calls Mike that he killed his chemist and will kill Julie as well if he doesn’t back off. Due to losing the only witness, Internal Affairs shuts them down. Despite this, Howard delays the order and gives time for Lowrey & Bennett to solve the case. Using the assist of incarcerated hacker Fletcher (John Salley), they access Dominguez’s file and learn the police secretary Francine (Anna Thompson) was an ex girlfriend who was blackmailed by him to give narcotics information. She makes it up to them by giving them a number they trace to a private airport. With the assist of Sanchez & Ruiz, Mike & Marcus raid the airport to ruin the deal and save Julie. In the result of a shootout, Fouchet and his remaining henchmen are shot down. The film would end with Marcus jokingly handcuffing Mike & Julie together while he heads home to his family without interruption.
THOUGHTS
In modern times, Michael Bay can be looked at as a questionable filmmaker with more critical misses than hits (Pearl Harbor and Transformers: Age of Extinction). We weren’t prepared for that outcome, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer was prepared from the fact alone he was guaranteed to make entertainment one way or the other. Together, they made something that lives up to said hype. To this day, I think this film carries quite the handful of well edited chases and shootouts where you’re being hooked from start to finish. The real selling point of this movie however goes to the satisfying dynamic duo that is Will Smith & Martin Lawrence. With both actors at the midst of wrapping up their respective sitcoms they star in (Martin and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air), they pushed boundaries in being co-leads in this action film and together, they were unstoppable. We get fair share of laughs seeing them banter over their different, but they do a great job in showing Mike & Marcus as brothers in arms. They have their differences yet they respect each other enough to get the job done together. Smith has us love Mike from the start because while he may be the playboy, he’s got the competence that gives him the focus that’ll get the job done. Lawrence does a great job differentiating Marcus from him because he’s the hard headed and most paranoid in comparison. He’s got the right to act as the latter because he’s a family man trying to balance life and work which isn’t easy for him at all. It definitely got harder when he had to swap identities temporarily. What I admired a lot from Marcus though is that he has much subtle remorse compared to his partner because he doesn’t get consumed with revenge. Mike’s the opposite because he refuses to be disrespected when the people he cares about are taken from him. He may not loved Max the way Marcus loves his wife, but he still cared about her and felt responsible for her murder since he asked for her help. And his efforts to protect Julie meant a lot to him because she’s the last memory left of her, making him refuse to bare with the guilt of losing her too. Seeing these two sides of the coin between theses protagonists puts it all together that this is a tale of being able to improvise, adapt and overcome in order to succeed in what you do. It is a simple theme yet so effective in their perspective because they do something unordinary and it works out for them in the long run. And because of that, I did not mind sitting down to the sequels because they maintain that vibe which have their successful forms of execution. Smith & Lawrence are what sell the movie, but they weren’t the only interesting characters. Joe Pantoliano really made the best out of his screen time as Captain Howard. Only one in a million you’ll see a police captain smoking a cigar while shooting basketball hoops and missing terribly. Seeing Mike & Marcus shoot with minimal effort had me riled with laughter. Putting that aside, Pantoliano was great on making the captain one who’s over the edge because he’s getting driven out of something he cares about. He puts so much trust in the protagonists because he knows they can recover from setbacks overtime which is exactly what they did. What I enjoyed about Téa Leoni as Julie is that she comes off more than a damsel in distress to me. She’s someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and acted out of fear when it came to finding the right person to protect her. When trying to have a clear conscience, she did pick up on when she was lied to which proved how self aware she is deep down. She does make her mistakes I’ll dissect on in a bit, but you can’t blame her in wanting revenge after seeing something she would’ve not expected. Her actions were irritating yet understandable and she can’t be hated for that. After all the mass hysteria went away, I hope she recovered from it and maintained an acquaintanceship with the two guys who gave their all in protecting her. Would I call Fouchet an amazing villain? Probably not, but I would clarify that Tchéky Karyn does a good job in making him a formidable threat because he’s so cunning to the point patience is not his strength and will cut ties with whoever to get what he wants. Thankfully, he meets his demise before he could be any more of a dominant force in Miami as a kingpin. I am honest to god when I say this movie is hella fun, but even an action lover like myself can admit there were some issues I picked up on during a rewatch. From the top, it’s a funny argument when Marcus makes a mess eating a burger in Mike’s car, but the latter should’ve known he was gonna eat it at some point if they’re driving around all day. If he cared about having a clean car so much, he should’ve told him to not get any food unless they were to eat outside the car. I said before how much I hate continuity errors, so you bet my mind felt twisted in a knot seeing the toys of Marcus’ kids go from one side of his bedroom to the other between takes. I can also complain about the helicopter footage documenting the bad boys using a take that appears to be set in day when it’s supposed to be done at night. That’s a lame excuse for Theresa and the kids to recognize him on the news. How could they not decide which place to keep them on? It should’ve not been that hard. Moving on, it’s a rookie move for the bad boys to not have gloves on them when they find a dead body because that’s asking yourself to be falsely accused. The stakes do get set when Julie enters the plot by joining Max on the job, but that could’ve been avoided if Lois didn’t encourage it. I get a few chuckles when Marcus chooses to miscommunicate with Theresa, but he’s avoiding a lot of stress if he was straight up with her like admitting he was talking to another person work related while also still talking to her on two different phones. And most obviously, he should’ve told her the situation with Julie because Mike would’ve had his back that he wouldn’t be unfaithful when protecting her. Hell, Marcus could’ve still told Julie who he was when they first met and he still could’ve earned her trust when they run away together. And if Mike didn’t want to be in Marcus’ home, he could’ve rented another hotel to have the free space he’s used to. I don’t understand why Mike chooses to call the house a zoo when he got along with the kids just fine. Another mistake he makes is not asking the captain to unlock the file when it becomes hard for Francine. This may be intentional to delay the twist of her connection with the enemy, but Mike could’ve made it easier going to either the Captain or Fletcher sooner. And ain’t it crazy for Mike’s booty call Yvette (Maureen Gallagher) to show up announced while he’s on duty? If she doesn’t know he’s a cop, that mishap with Marcus is more on Mike than it is on her. Hell, you can say it’s also on Marcus for not telling Mike sooner she left a voicemail. I know villains do shady shit on a busy night in public, but they were literally playing with fire when bringing the ether shipment to Club Hell when there were a shitload of witnesses outside the club. That’s another moment where you’re just asking to get caught. Now I don’t blame Julie wanting to avenge Max, but it’s totally reckless to go to Club Hell when Mike & Marcus told her not to, which is just another moment of asking for trouble. I know she’s paranoid, but this would’ve not happened if she trusted Marcus enough to come into the station for questioning. Having said that, you know she’s a hypocrite complaining about her predicament when she turned down protective custody. And personally, I think Club Hell still should’ve been a viable lead after the altercation that occurred there. I know Noah was the best lead but since the bad boys found him there before the chase, that has to count for something. Hell, I’m even surprised Fouchet was willing to kidnap Julie in broad daylight in an apartment complex that had cameras. Even if he’s gonna flee the country, it’s stupid because he’s placing a bigger target on him by the end. However, I can still enjoy this film overall once I ignore said flaws. In short, Bad Boys is an action classic for being fun and compelling enough simultaneously. If buddy cop flicks like Lethal Weapon are your thing, check this out.
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