*Originally written September 12th, 2018*
Michael Bay actually shows some promise with his first film, Bad Boys. While it has the "Bayhem" flair, it actually shows the talent of a first time director with potential. All the Bay problems here are kept to a minimum and only unleashed in his later and more abhorrent films.
Bad Boys is a fairly generic buddy-cop film about two detectives who are polar opposites of each other, working together to solve the case of a drug robbery and murder of a woman that involves a witness they must protect.
Will Smith's Mike Lowrey is a playboy millionaire who is only a cop as a hobby, while Martin Lawrence's Marcus Burnett is an honest family man. I'd like to say these two have great chemistry and are a match made in heaven, sadly they are not. Will Smith plays it with his usual Will Smith charm that has only grown stale. Martin Lawrence is just annoying. All the side characters are horrible, especially Marcus's wife, who is a just a total uptight buzzkill and nothing more. Way to write women characters, Bay....
Bay's flourish for action works much better on a small scale here. All the set-pieces look nice and feel unique. The finale at the airport is the standout, while throughout there is a couple of smaller moments. This whole thing feels weird. It's a Michael Bay film with not a lot of action, which I appreciate. It's just a shame his characters are utterly horrible and the writing is appalling.
The plot is messy and makes no sense. Marcus and Mike have to pretend to be each other in some deeply unfunny scenes. As a comedy this falls completely flat. All the jokes are either cringe-worthy or uncomfortably racist. There's the two Spanish cops and one of the them is named "Mendez", because of course.
I sound negative, but I do appreciate this film on a purely throwback level. It reeks of '90s and Bay clearly comes from a music directing background that shows. There is so much '90s cheese, especially in the music with some laughable guitar riffs. It really was a product of its time.
Even looking at the poster, Michael Bay clearly has a huge hard-on for the colour yellow. Bad Boys is non-stop yellow, from the opening to closing scene. The whole film is over saturated in a piss coloured yellow aesthetic. I hated the colour scheme. I actually much prefer his blue look he uses in his later films. Even with the overbearing yellow colour scheme, this is a gorgeous 4K release, brimming with detail and vibrant improvements on the colours. The previous "Mastered in 4K" Blu-ray release was excellent too, but this more than tops that. Another class UHD release from Sony. Can't wait to see how Bad Boys 2 looks.
The bad guy is utterly forgettable too. I'm looking at the IMDB cast know and am having a hard time remembering what the bad guy was called and who played him. He pops up in a few scenes and leaves no kind of impact whatsoever.
I don't feel I've talked enough about how awful these characters are. Will Smith is a complete douche-bag, we get hints of his womanising, his home is basically a shrine to himself, which would be fine, even pretty funny had the character been written better, but he's just an asshole. I don't get Martin Lawrence either, his character never goes beyond doing a high-pitched voice in a tense situation. So annoying. Oh, these people are awful cops too. I don't know how they weren't fired.
For better or worse, this is where Bayhem begins, and I say "Game on".
6/10 Dans
Bad Boys is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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