Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return
one more time to the Bad Boys buddy-cop franchise with Bad Boys: Ride
or Die. The results are nothing special and will likely only please
die-hard fans of the series.
At the start of the film, Smith's Mike
Lowery is finally getting married. Lawrence's Marcus Burnett suffers a
near-fatal heart attack at the reception that has him believing he can't die
(the movie forgets about this gag for long stretches then periodically
reintroduces it). Their deceased captain (Joe Pantoliano) has been framed for
drug trafficking and corruption. The two aging cops set out to clear his name
and find the mole in law enforcement.
The plotting is indifferent. The mole
is easy to guess from the first moment they appear on screen. The climactic
showdown with the bad guys' chief muscle (Eric Dane) is ripped off directly
from an iconic 1980s action-comedy buddy film. The attempts at humor mostly
misfire. The actor who gets the most laughs is Dennis McDonald as Burnett's
impassive Marine son-in-law. The only action scene that impresses is a fight on
a plummeting aircraft.
The film's opening weekend box office
did give a needed shot in the arm to theaters struggling to keep up in a year
where the release slate is pretty barren because of last year's protracted
strikes in Hollywood, which halted productions for several months. So at least Bad
Boys: Ride or Die has done some good even if it is not a good movie.
