The best thing about Bad Boys for Life is how inoffensive it is. Even Mike Lowery (Will Smith), the resident hotshot renegade, is more well behaved this time around. Part of this is because the director of the previous two films, Michael Bay is absent from this installment, although the new directors, Adil El Arbi and Billal Fallah provide a good deal of familiar tricks that call back to Bay’s signature touch.
The film begins with Marcus (Martin Lawrence) and Mike racing through Miami in Mike’s Porsche, trying to make it in time for the birth of Marcus’s grandson. Marcus is thinking of retirement, while Mike wants to do the job until he literally can’t. Things get harrowing when a vengeful Mexican druglord (Kate del Castillo) breaks out of prison and orders her son, Armando Armas (Jacob Scipio) to carry out her revenge, which involves gunning down Mike in broad daylight.
Marcus and Mike are old enough to not be bad boys anymore: instead, they are trying to be ‘good men’. While Mike still runs into danger headfirst, he’s also hamstrung by his police chief (Joe Pantoliano), who assigns the new elite unit, AMMO, to lead the investigation. AMMO is run by Mike’s old flame, Rita (Paola Núñez), and it’s the main way the film addresses the central conceit of the film: Marcus and Mike’s best days are clearly behind them.
Considering the January release date, you can be forgiven for assuming this to be a bad movie unceremoniously dumped without much fanfare, especially since almost no one was asking for another Bad Boys sequel. Thankfully, the film is paced smoothly, and its action scenes also benefit from a more steady handling, with longer beats and good sense of space, as opposed to Bay’s frenetic editing. The film also tries to introduce emotional stakes for Marcus and Mike that stretch beyond the usual bromance, and while that doesn’t always work, Smith and Lawrence’s chemistry carries them through for the most part.
There’s a twist late in the film that, surprisingly, mirrors some of the pathos attempted in Smith’s recent action vehicle, Gemini Man. It’s almost like he gets to have a second go at the concept. It’s treated seriously for a minute and a half before Marcus starts to poke fun at it.
While the new villains are convincingly dangerous, they disappear for large stretches of the film. In comparison, they are better than what we got in the previous two movies, and in fact, Bad Boys for Life is comfortably the best movie out of the three.
Compared to more traditional Michael Bay fare such as 6 Underground, this movie is more self aware and steadily paced.
However, maybe that isn’t always beneficial for the narrative: it feels a lot more safe than something like 6 Underground, which was crazily over the top in true Bay fashion. Still, if you are in the market for an enjoyable buddy cup movie, then Bad Boys for Life may just be the film for you.
Will there be a fourth installment? Possibly, but hopefully it happens at a quicker pace. Bad Boys for Life takes place seventeen years after Bad Boys 2. Of course, this kind of time difference hasn’t stopped Sylvester Stallone from making Rambo: Last Blood. Let’s hope we don’t see that happen again.
