When Bad Boys for Life picks up, Detective Michael “Mike” Lowrey (Will Smith) is in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis. He’s started dying his greying goatee and his muscle shirts and shiny cars come across as a cry for help more than anything. The film itself is in a similar bind. It wants to be more mature than its predecessors - or, at least, as mature as a franchise that, at its core, is a collection of ’80s buddy cop tropes repackaged with Michael Bay’s style of bombastic action, can be - but doesn’t quite reach that sweet spot between laughing at its own ridiculousness and treating its dramatic moments with the weightiness they deserve. In the end, Bad Boys for Life settles for being a surprisingly entertaining sequel (no more, but no less) that partially evolves the Bad Boys brand.

The film begins with Miami Detective Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence), now a newly-minted grandpa or Pop-Pop (as he prefers to be called), informing his longtime partner Mike about his intention to retire soon, much to the latter’s consternation. Lawrence and Smith’s onscreen chemistry remains as crackling as ever in Bad Boys for Life and it’s easy to believe the pair have spent all these years working together since the last time we saw them in 2003’s Bad Boys II. Wisely, the movie doesn’t try and pretend the actors aren’t middled-aged dads in their real lives either and leans into it, playing up the awkwardness of them reprising roles they originated a quarter-century ago for intentional comedic effect. This Grumpy Old Bad Boys approach might not work for everyone, but it prevents this new sequel from feeling like a misbegotten attempt at letting Lawrence and Smith relive their glory days.

Things take a turn for the serious when Mike is gunned down and nearly killed by a mysterious assassin, forcing the (no longer) “bulletproof” detective to confront his own mortality and face the demons of his past. But in order to do so, Mike will have to work with his former flame Rita (Paola Núñez) and her AMMO squad, a team of millennial cops (played by Vanessa Hudgens, Charles Melton, and Alexander Ludwig) who, unlike his younger self, play by the rules and use digital-era tech to avoid creating unnecessary collateral damage. While it’s obvious the AMMO crew was included here to help set-up a potential Bad Boys 4, they make for an enjoyable foil to Mike and, eventually, Marcus, especially Riverdale’s Melton as the cocky Rafe. Less successful, however, is the villain subplot, which feels lifted straight out of one of the soap operas Marcus spends his post-retirement life watching. Bad Boys for Life is credited to three different writers (Chris Bremner, Peter Craig, and its onetime director, Joe Carnahan), so that may explain why it’s a bit of a narrative hodgepodge altogether.

Filmmaking duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah take over as directors from Bay on Bad Boys for Life, embracing a style that, in more ways than one, can best be summed up as “Michael Bay-lite”. That’s actually a good thing, in this situation. As anyone who’s watched his recent Netflix movie, 6 Underground, can attest, Bay the director has basically become a parody of himself, and it’s to Arbi and Fallah’s credit that they steer this sequel away from the misogyny, racism, and incomprehensibly edited action associated with “Bayhem” as much as possible. Bad Boys for Life isn’t above cracking jokes about Marcus’ habit of being an easy cryer, but it also makes room for some sincere emotion in-between its set pieces and brings about as much depth to its protagonists as can be expected. The actual spectacle is still plenty bloody and sun-drenched, landing somewhere between the bizarrely wanton destruction of Bad Boys II and the explosion friendliness of the first Bad Boys (even if the directors and their DP Robrecht Heyvaert falter whenever they try and copy Bay’s signature low-angle spinning shot).

Bad Boys for Life doesn’t manage to follow in Fast & Furious’ footsteps and reinvent an older action franchise for an era where superheroes and world-building reign supreme, yet it proves there’s still room for two everyman Miami detectives who’re just trying to make the world a better place. It’s more effective as an action-comedy about Mike and Marcus struggling to figure out what they want in life (now that they’re facing north of fifty) that a reflective drama about Mike coming to terms with his traumas and mistakes, if only because the latter plot thread tries to build on a foundation that, frankly, was never really there in the first two Bad Boys movies. Still, as a possible and even likely sendoff to this franchise, it’s an unexpectedly decent one. Of course, nothing’s ever really over in Hollywood nowadays, and the film very much leaves the door open for another sequel, just in case audiences decide they want to go on one last, last ride with Lawrence and Smith down the line. After this one, they may well want to.

Bad Boys for Life is now playing in U.S. theaters. It is 123 minutes long and is rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual references, and brief drug use.

  • Bad Boys 3 Release Date: 2020-01-17