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Bad Boys II (2003)
I need some aspirin. Watching this movie gave me a headache. No, I'm not complaining about how loud it is like most critics are. And no I'm not complaining about all the explosions and mayhem either. What gave me the headache was director Michael Bay's obsession with shooting action sequences by shaking the camera like a terrier with a rat. Yes it conveys the extremities of the action he's shooting but it also gives me motion sickness. It's like going to one of those bars in spring break resorts where they give you a shot and then grab your head and shake it like mad. It's really only appealing when you're already raging drunk. And like Bad Boys II the end result is an overpowering urge to vomit.
There is something you might call a plot in this movie but don't expect it to make much sense. Basically we follow too Miami cops, Marcus (Martin Lawrence) and Mike (Will Smith), as they try to take down a drug lord. Complicating this is the fact that Mike is secretly dating Marcus' sister (Gabrielle Union) who also happens to be working undercover for the DEA as they try to take down the very same drug lord. Plus Marcus is growing unhappy with Mike's, shall we say casual disregard for public safety, so he's considering breaking up the partnership. That makes for a loose framework which incessant car chases, gun battles and explosions can be hung on. Forget about character development or plot twists. This movies doesn't even have characters. It has charicatures. You name the unwholesome racial stereotype and this movie has it covered.
There isn't anything even resembling a thought in this movie. This is a movie about finding creative new ways to blow up stuff. This is about taking bullet time effects and using them to give you a great view of bullets ripping through heads. This a movie where a mine becomes a selective killing device. This is a movie where not only doesn't it require any thought on the viewer's part, it actively discourages it. Applying coherent thought to this film is like picking up a big rock and watching all the bugs scurry away.
Yes there is something undeniably distasteful and slimy about these proceedings. Examples are endless like a nightclub scene where the camera flies all around but mostly under the skirts of women for some gratuitous thong shots, or maybe a scene where cadavers fall out the back of a hearse during a chase and get run over and heavily mutilated by the car driven by our supposed heroes, or even better watching said heroes probe a different set of corpses for drugs and money. There is seemingly nothing sacred to Bay in this film. Nothing is too distasteful.
The problem for me is that the graphic violence is at odds with the a film that tries to be action comedy. Now when a movie like Braveheart or Saving Private Ryan shows us people being graphically killed or wounded, it has a purpose. It wants to shock the viewer, to make the setting so real that it must be taken seriously. So what purpose does it serve in a comedy? Is it funnier to see someone die when their body is vividly torn to shreds by an explosion? If so it must be even funnier yet to see the various parts make bloody splats later in the scene. This movie crosses a line. It goes past a cartoonish violence that we can appreciate but not take seriously. It tries so hard to be real that it forgets this is supposed to be escapist entertainment. We're here to have fun for a couple hours (of which this movie overstays its welcome by 30 minutes) and forget our troubles. That's a little hard when the guys we're supposed to be rooting for are committing acts of violence so severe that other movies would have made them the centerpiece of a trial. Here we have a movie where the tone and the action don't seem to be in the same state, never mind the same ballpark. Bay just takes random scenes and tosses them into his editing cuisinart and pours the sorry mess into theaters.
Credit Will Smith with managing to look respectable in the midst of this chaos. He and Lawrence have some chemistry but it is exploited far too infrequently. Incidently, Lawrence looked constipated through much of the film. He might want to consider getting some roughage in his diet. Gabriel Union has proven a talented young star in other films but gets nothing to do her beyond looking pretty. Joe Pantoliano has a lot of fun with the cliched police captain fed up with his rogue cops.
It's hard to call this a badly made film as clearly a lot of skill went into the extensive special effects and stunt work. But the rest of the film seems to have been assembled haphazardly, with thought going only to provoking audience reaction. I can appreciate the technical skill that went into the film. What I can't appreciate is a morally bankrupt disaster that pretends to be harmless summer fun.
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