Movie Review: 'Bad Boys for Life'

Looking back at the movies of 2020, especially those that were released pre-COVID shutdown, it’s as if these movies came out a decade ago not a mere 9 or 10 months. COVID-19 plus the election made 2020 feel as if it were a decade all in one year. We all aged about a decade waiting for good news, waiting for the election to end, waiting for a time when we could talk to relatives again without worrying about killing them by sharing the same air and space.

All of this is said to remind us all, it’s really okay that we all forgot Bad Boys for Life ever existed. This Will Smith-Martin Lawrence reunion wasn’t anything anyone asked for and it wasn’t worth having come into existence. And, with all that has happened since Bad Boys for Life was released back in January, it’s fair and reasonable for us all to collectively wipe our minds of this flaccid attempt at creating 1990’s nostalgia.

So why am I reviewing it? If my point is that it is okay to forget it, why am I trying to remember it? I don’t have a good answer for that.

Bad Boys for Life picks up the lives of Detectives Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and Marcus Bennett (Martin Lawrence) as they are in the midst of yet another high stakes situation. Marcus is nearly killed and the situation finally drives him to the realization that it is time to walk away from being a cop. It’s time to retire, stop shooting people, and get on with the life of a pension drawing, soon to be grandfather.

Mike Lowery however, is unable to walk away. Having never had a family, other than Marcus, and having defined his life via his work, he can’t understand even the desire to walk away. Marcus’s easy willingness to put down the badge and gun and walk away is a mystery to Mike. Then, as Marcus is celebrating the birth of his grandson, Mike is shot and nearly killed by an assassin hired by a woman from Mike and Marcus’ past,

The woman is Isabel Aretas (Kate Del Castill0), the wife of a drug kingpin that Mike and Marcus killed years ago. She, along with her son, Armando (Jacob Scipio), went to jail following her husband’s death and she’s been stewing for years over wanting Mike, specifically, to be killed. Having escaped from prison, Isabel sends Armando to Miami to retrieve a fortune her late husband has hidden there while she sends an assassin to kill a list of people that ends with Mike Lowery.

The assassin fails however, after he mistakenly targeted Mike first and failed to kill him, leaving Mike in a coma for several months. During this time, Marcus has retired and the assassin has gone on to kill several people on Isabel’s hit list while waiting for the opportunity to kill Lowery when he is once again conscious. Naturally, Mike wakes up wanting revenge but first he has to convince Marcus to come out of retirement and be his partner once again.

My description is much more straightforward than the movie which, directed by newcomers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, appears to have been edited in a blender and shot as if the camera were constantly overheating and melting the film frames, a strange notion for a movie shot on digital, but nevertheless. The style is reminiscent of that of original Bad Boys director Michael Bay and that is not compliment. Bay's dire attempts to dress up dreary gun battles in special effects nonsense has clearly rubbed off on these new young directors.

Will Smith, not surprisingly, is the best thing in the movie but even he looks tired. Smith is charisma personified but here, his age is showing. Though Smith and Martin Lawrence each expressed a strong desire to return to the Bad Boys franchise, their collective energy is diminished by time and their once sharp wits have dulled into, for Smith, a dour glare, and for Lawrence, a sadsack routine that just makes you sad for him. I know he's going for a Danny Glover, 'I'm too old for this ####' routine but the imitation only highlights how tired he is.

Bad Boys for Life isn’t a complete embarrassment for the duo of Smith and Lawrence but it is certainly not the note they wanted to go out on. Exhausted, unfunny, and relentlessly over-directed, Bad Boys for Life is what happens when you put ego and a paycheck ahead of the work. Smith and Lawrence may still have the desire to be Mike and Marcus but the meta-narrative of Bad Boys for Life is how these characters seem to recognize what the actors don’t, that this concept and these performances are completely worn out.