Review of the movie Bad Boys: Ride or Die

The return of the Bad Boys movie series to the big screen in 2020 is one of the most unexpected things that modern Hollywood has given us. It would seem that such 90s-inspired stories should remain somewhere at the junction of the last millennium and the noughties. But Bad Boys Forever still managed to raise enough money for the film crew to decide to make another movie.

The first two installments of Bad Boys were not critically acclaimed, and the third film in the series was mostly justified by the competent use of nostalgic notes. Bad Boys: Ride or Die can no longer work solely on the basis of light sadness for happy but forever lost days. That’s why the movie is no longer so impressive – and this is despite the fact that it has enough interesting moments.

The next adventure of Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) begins when the latter has a heart attack. During it, he sees a vision of a severe challenge that the tandem of protagonists will have to face. It is connected with corruption within the Miami police, which additionally casts a shadow over the deceased captain of the protagonists. They will have to find the real culprits in order to clear not only the captain’s reputation, but also their own.

From the very first frames, the film begins to actively promote visual methods, styles and ideas that were popular in cinema at the turn of the millennium. Even the color correction, which is heavily dominated by yellows and browns, is a reference to the fun action movies of the 1990s and 2000s. This is something you need to realize from the very beginning: Bad Boys: Ride or Die is an old-fashioned movie. And the degree to which you can accept or even love this fact will determine the level of satisfaction you get from watching it.

Because if you evaluate the movie by modern standards, you will find that many of its moments are mediocre at most, nothing more. Even the plot’s denouement feels far-fetched and not at all in keeping with the tradition of buddy cop stories. In addition, it quickly becomes clear that the “mystical” beginning of the story can be thrown out of the script without any harm to the latter. Questions arise about the artificial methods of stretching the timing.

On the other hand, after his heart attack, Marcus believed in his own invulnerability, as if fate would not allow him to die. Of course, it’s mostly Mike who prevents him from dying, as he has to save his overconfident friend. At the same time, Mike himself has begun to suffer from panic attacks, so in some tense moments he cannot think properly. These two nuances affect the dynamics of the action moments and create unique situations that are pleasant and interesting to watch. But this element was not without its drawbacks.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die seems to regularly forget about new features of the main characters. That’s why about half of the action is standard, even sterile. It is not clear why you would introduce additional characteristics into the story and then not use them to their full potential. In Bad Boys: Ride or Die has more potential, but its full realization did not reach the audience.

I would also like to criticize the camera shake, which is felt almost constantly. There is only one creative shootout scene in the film, and all the others are realized with the help of the ubiquitous shaking. It would seem that everyone has long realized that this method of filming only spoils the perception of the movie, and some viewers may even feel dizzy. But the creators of Bad Boys: All or Nothing seemed to have forgotten this lesson.

The cinematography in general is a bit of a mess. Bad Boys: Ride or Die constantly uses close-ups of the actors and clutters the horizon for no good reason. Visually, everything is more disgusting than enjoyable. And no amount of big-screen magic can save it. Perhaps this is one of the rare cases when a movie at home or even on a smartphone will look better than in the theater.

What about the plot? Bad Boys has never been watched for its high drama or unexpected plot twists. The script of each part is primarily a playground for Smith and Lawrence to further entertain us with the chemistry between the main characters. Everything else went on as if in the background, even when the third part tried to draw the audience’s attention to the past and the motivation of the protagonists.

In Ride or Die, the old formula remains unchanged. At the same time, the movie is closely related to the previous installment and even found a place for references to the first and second installments, so fans will be happy. However, the main story is a set of banal, empty phrases, and you can predict all the plot moves almost in the first fifteen minutes. And you don’t need to be an expert in cinema to do so.

But the chemistry between Mike and Marcus again helps us to overlook, if not forget, the problems of the script. The communication between the main characters always looks lively, and you believe in their boundless friendship throughout the entire runtime. This is a movie in which absolutely all other characters are just script tools, conditional jumpers that allow the story to move on. All for the sake of the main characters making a joke or evoking the audience’s empathy in other ways.

Somewhere in the final act of Bad Boys: Ride or Die even builds up the drama in an interesting way and raises the stakes, which is quite unexpected against the background of the previous banal moments. And during this development of events, you catch yourself thinking that it’s impossible to treat Bad Boys: Ride or Die is impossible to treat in any way. It’s definitely not a boring or average movie. It’s rather outdated and worse than average, but its individual elements are sincerely fascinating and impressive. In other words, the overall “minus” is pulled up to a decent level by a few interesting “pluses.”

Perhaps we should speculate a bit about the general development of culture. After all, in the conditional year 2000, Bad Boys: Ride or Die would definitely have looked much better. However, the art of cinema does not stand still, which cannot be said about the new Bad Boys.

However, the movie does feature DJ Khaled and Lionel Messi, and the audience laughed out loud during some of the jokes and applauded at the end. This proves once again that a movie doesn’t have to be high art or even just good to appeal to the audience.