Bad Boys (1995)

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Tea Leoni, Joe Pantaloni

Country: United States

Rating: R

Run Time: 119 minutes

My personal relationship with mega hit director Michael Bay has been an interesting one. He is someone that I loved in my high school years, despised in my college years, and remotely admire in my post college years. I, like many dumb teenagers, thought Bay's Transformers films were the coolest thing ever upon initial release. It wasn't until my college years when I began to hate Bay, especially once Transformers: Dark of the Moon rolled around. This was the time in my life when I used to go around saying that Bay was one of the worst filmmakers in Hollywood. Fast forward to 2015, and I still believe that Bay is an inherently flawed filmmaker. However, I now realize how incredible his artistic vision is when it comes to explosions and visuals. Few filmmakers specialize in pure cinematic escapism and garbage as much as Bay does. If Bay could just get away from over sexualizing women, over long run times, and childish humor, than his films would probably equal John Woo's American output in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

The "Bayhem" all began with Bad Boys, a small scaled buddy cop film starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. Bad Boys can be blamed for jump starting the Hollywood careers of both Bay and Smith, as it was essentially both their first mega hit. Bay's debut film is shockingly small scaled and personal in relation to his contemporary cinema. It's nice to see Bay handle a story on such a small scale and to work with relatively small action sequences. Unfortunately, one can spot all of Bay's flaws, as well as his strengths, right here in his debut action picture. Bad Boys is a film that both pleases and immensely pisses me off. Oh Bay, you never fail to elicit an emotional reaction out of me even after all of these years.

The boys are here for their first Bay infused adventure.

Bad Boys is a buddy cop film in every way, shape, and form. It tells the story of two narcotics division detectives, Mike Lowry (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence), who work for the Miami Police Department. Lowry and Burnett are essentially Tubbs and Crockett from Miami Vice, but louder, more foul mouthed, and invincible. In fact, Bad Boys itself is pretty much Miami Vice, just jacked up on steroids and written by a 12 year old at times. For their first action packed outing, Lowry and Burnett are tasked with retrieving heroin stolen from the Miami Police Department, the exact heroin that the two of them busted from the Mafia not too long ago. If the boys cannot retrieve the heroin within five days time and uncover the mole within the police department, than the narcotics division will be shut down for good. Things are further complicated when Julie (Tea Leoni), a friend of one of Mike's informants, witnesses a murder by the men who stole the heroin. It is than up to Mike and Marcus to look after Julie and to take down the villainous Fouchet (Tcheky Karyo) and his gang before the five days run up.

Bay's debut feature is based around a fairly simple plot: two detectives protect a witness connected to the capture of their famed heroin bust. Unfortunately, Bay and his screenwriters essentially turn the film into one big comedy bit where Lawrence must pretend to be Smith's character for almost the entirety of the picture. When the Miami P.D. gets a call from Julie, she demands to only speak with Mike Lowry because her now deceased friend knew him. However, the only cop nearby is Marcus. Therefore, the captain hands the phone off to Marcus and orders him to pretend to be Mike so as not to let the witness slip through their hands. What follows is a nearly picture length bit padded with jokes about mistaken identity and Marcus spewing as many lies as possible to Julie. He takes her to Mike's house and pretends to be Mike himself, only to find himself fending off her sexual advances and coming up with lies as to why he has pictures of the real Mike in his house.

This comedic bit becomes painfully old once it turns into the conceit of the picture. I don't understand why Bay and his screenwriters couldn't have just focused on the plot at hand and not force the audience through so much of Martin Lawrence's painfully unfunny comedy. This role reversal overly complicates the plot and characters' life purely for comedy. It pisses me off though because Marcus should simply explain to Julie that he is not Mike the first time that he meets her so that there is no further confusion from there. He should also tell his wife that he is never around because he is protecting a witness, it's his job for goodness sakes. All of the lies and deceit is eventually revealed anyways towards the end of the film in a meet up between Mike, Marcus, Julie, and Marcus' wife Teresa. This comedic sub-plot does nothing but drag the picture to its death and kill it from ever coming back despite the awesome action sequences.

The boys take part in an unfunny scene that made me tear my hair out.

The cop parts of Bad Boys are great; from the action, to the style, to even the villainy. Unfortunately, it's the buddy part that doesn't work for me. Smith and Lawrence have great chemistry, they really do. It's just a shame that their schtick as a buddy pairing is based entirely around screaming and yelling at one another all of the time. They also have to work with a grating script that makes their characters more offensive and annoying than hilarious and likable, a key element of a buddy cop film. I'd much rather take Riggs and Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon series or Lee and Carter from the Rush Hour series over these two any day.

Bad Boys is also filled with several scenes that halt the plot in place for no reason other than to add more "comedy" to the film. The most unnecessary scene in the entire film, a liquor store hold up, is so ridiculous that I can't believe the producers or the editors kept it in the picture. When Mike and Marcus go into a liquor store to buy some alcohol and shampoo, the clerk spots that Mike has a gun on his waist. When Mike pulls his vest back to grab his wallet, the clerk overreacts and pulls a freaking Desert Eagle handgun from behind the counter and yells, "Freeze mother bitches!" at them. As Mike starts to tell the clerk that they are cops, Marcus makes the situation worse by yelling at Mike and saying that he is a magnet for trouble. As the tension rises, Mike and Marcus pull out their guns (pictured above), aim them at the clerk, and than ask for a pack of bubblegum and skittles. Guys, what was the point of this scene?! Tell me!

As you can tell, I am not a fan of Michael Bay's sense of humor or plotting. Therefore, what does work in Bad Boys, if anything? For starters, Bad Boys is a 90s action picture through and through. The film is packed with gun fights, car chases, and practical stunt work that reminds the viewer why the 90s were the last hurrah of old fashioned action. The final two gun fights, one in a hotel (pictured below) and another in an explosive hangar bay, hold up especially well. It's also interesting to see Bay orchestrate action sequences without a dozen or so explosions. The Bay that we know today doesn't take fruition until the final hangar bay sequence in which cars, people, and a plane are blown sky high in a truly explosive finale.

Nice John Woo shot Bay.

It's fun to watch Bay find his footing as a filmmaker with such a small scaled feature. While the man has since graduated to leveling whole cities in his Transformer films, Bay shows good action competence for a cop genre picture. Bad Boys also introduces several of Bay's stylistic tendencies that have since become staples of his filmography: the over head plane shot, the rotating camera shot around his actors, and extreme slow motion editing. Bay's signature teal and orange color palette wouldn't appear until Armageddon. Therefore, Bad Boys looks rather bland in comparison to his visually gorgeous films.

Unfortunately, Bad Boys introduces all of Bay's flaws as a filmmaker as well. Bay is notorious for over sexualizing women within his films, putting the "male" into the phrase "male gaze." Bay's camera hugs women as if they were objects and rarely treats them as actual people unless they are the romantic love interest or motherly figure in the picture. Bad Boys also introduces Bay's immature and offensive sense of humor that has persisted throughout his filmography, right up into Transformers: Age of Extinction.

However, I think that I would be willing to forgive Bay's sense of humor and over sexualization of women if the man could at least understand restraint. Bay's films are notoriously long, typically running somewhere between two and three hours. Bad Boys is a case of Bay's failure to understand restraint, as the film runs nearly two hours in length, a whopping 30 minutes too long if you ask me. Bay could have easily chopped a majority of the film's comedy bits in order to make the film a swift and entertaining experience. Unfortunately, Bay goes all out and seems to include nearly every scene that was shot in order to give audiences as much bang for their buck as possible.

Now that's what you call an explosion.

Bad Boys is a frustrating action picture that commits as many wrongs as it does rights. Bay's over the top action sequences and Marc Mancina's bombastic score are the film's strongest highlights. Bay blows the hell out of Miami, Florida with an array of car chases, fist fights, and shootouts that put the "may" in "mayhem," or should I say "Bayhem." Bad Boys is a case of style over substance if there ever was one. The film is burdened by a terribly unfunny script, juvenile humor, and a pair of protagonists who make me want to tear my hair out. If Bad Boys were not an R rated action film from the hey days of the 90s, than I probably wouldn't have given it my time or attention. However, I just had to experience the film that started Bay's career. Stay tuned for a review of the sequel in which the boys get badder and the action gets bigger.

Rating: 5/10 - Bay's debut picture is as frustrating as it is entertaining; proceed with caution.

Franchise:

Bad Boys (dir. Michael Bay, 1995)

Bad Boys II (dir. Michael Bay, 2003)