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| Bad Boys II (2003)
 
Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Gabrielle Union Director: Michael Bay Rating: R Category: Action  |
I'm going to get straight to the point on this one: "Bad Boys 2" sucks. The headache caused by no-talent co-star Martin Lawrence's constant screaming still lingers days later along with the painful memories of the over-the-top action sequences that simply ruined the film. And now, I'm left to mourn the two and a half hours I forever lost to this horrible sequel, precious time I'll never recoup.
Will Smith and Lawrence, responsible for the enormous success of the original film in 1995, return as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett, two Miami police narcotics officers who are now chasing a huge shipment of Ecstasy that was transported by water to clubs all over Miami. The man in charge of the drugs is Johnny Tapia (Jordi Molla), a Cuban gangster resembling some reject villain from "Miami Vice" who is using dead bodies to transport the drugs and his money down to Cuba.
Also on his track is a rookie DEA agent, Syd Burnett (Gabrielle Union), who has been undercover for months and finally has the opportunity to bring Tapia down when the gangster seizes control of all the clubs in Miami. The only problem is that Syd has connections with both Marcus (his little sister) and Mike (his secret lover), and while they only want to protect her, they instead manage to generate the kind of unwanted attention that could possibly blow Syd's cover.
All of this takes more than an hour to accomplish and by then the audience already looks bored with the tedious back story and plot build-up director Michael Bay tries to splash throughout his playground of explosions and car crashes. All Bay really accomplishes in this first hour, though, is illustrating that Marcus and Mike are irresponsible cops who disagree with one another way too often, a point he'd already established in the first 10 minutes of the original, thus making this common knowledge to any fan of the series. And while I rarely complain about an action film delivering "too much" action, the senseless sequences injected into "Bad Boys 2" often steal time that should instead have been spent writing fresh and funny jokes, not ones that make you laugh only because you think you should.
Another huge problem with "Bad Boys 2" is its stars. Will Smith comes off too serious in this sequel and Martin Lawrence is just plain annoying. Smith isn't given the space his character really needs to grow while Lawrence is given supposedly humorous problems to deal with that just aren't funny. In short, this film was a complete and utter disappoint. In a summer filled with films that all had the right idea but lost their perspective, "Bad Boys 2" drags along with no fresh ideas at all, unless you count the use of non-stop action to cover the negative effects of weak writing and Martin Lawrence. I, however, do not.
~Jason Zingale
jzingale@bullz-eye.com
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