MovieMonday: Bad Boys for Life

Twenty-five years ago there was a buddy cop movie called Bad Boys and, eight years later, a sequel called Bad Boys II.   Both were popular.  Critics liked the easy back-and-forth between detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) but hated the derivative, unoriginal, explosion-laden plots.

Now the Bad Boys are middle-aged and back for another go.  Of the three films, this is regarded as the best by far.

Mike and Marcus are older, yes, but not that changed.  The film opens with Mike behind the wheel of his shiny Porsche, handling it like a stunt driver while Marcus frets in the passenger seat.  They are in a hurry to get to the hospital to meet Martin's new grandson.  Martin dreams of retirement and playing with young Marcus while Mike has no plan to slow down, not ever.

Then problems arise in Miami.  The widow of a drug lord the Bad Boys put away escapes from prison herself and directs her son to settle scores by executing the public officials she blames.  The son shoots Mike in the stomach with an assault rifle as he pops a wheelie on his motorcycle.

Mike wants Marcus to work with him on finding the shooter.  Marcus hems and haws and finally agrees.  Their longtime captain (Joe Pantoliano) resists but then relents a bit, allowing the two to "observe" as his younger, more tech-savvy detectives do their investigation.

But Mike is from the old school.  He handcuffs one potential witness to a metal fixture and then shouts out questions while he has the guy in a headlock.  In another case, Mike kicks open a door and aims a big pistol at a man.  (Interesting in a day when police departments are outfitting officers with bodycams.)

As the story unspools there are the now-common explosions and shootings in various settings but also something a bit unusual -- several family stories, including Martin's plus one or possibly two for Mike toward the end.  And, to be fair, there is a lot of humor in the interchanges between Mike and Marcus, two characters known to the audience and happy to lay into the plot's gags with fine timing and great zest.

The movie is nicely filmed with gorgeous establishing shots of Miami and Biscayne Bay.  One interesting touch comes when dead bodies fall out of windows in the upper stories of Miami Beach's famous Broadmoor Hotel, and -- oops! -- one lands on the roof of Marcus' wife's minivan, making a largish dent.

Perhaps the difference between this Bad Boys film and its two predecessors is that the first two were directed by Michael Bay, who is best-known for directing the Transformers movies that perhaps did not allow for much exploration of the characters' personal lives.  The current film was directed by Belgians Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who made a gang-oriented Romeo & Juliet-type film that was popular in Europe.

This is not the time of year when really promising movies are released.  In Southern California particularly, tout Los Angeles is busy seeing, or re-seeing, Oscar-nominated movies in anticipation of next month's Academy Awards program.  Except for the apparently awful new Dr. Dolittle film, there's not much new in theaters.

But Bad Boys for Life has been very well received.  A fourquel now is planned.


Note

The trailers before this movie included SIX previews whose stories involve lots of guns and shooting (just in the previews.)  Interesting drama requires conflict, and I get that there is an audience for such.  But sometimes I wonder why gun-control advocates get more cheesed off about the National Rifle Association than a film industry that courts young viewers, particularly young men, with movie after movie of handsome actors shooting handguns and assault weapons and flame throwers, and lobbing grenades, and setting off bombs.  We know that people take fashion tips from actors and celebrities.  Is it not possible that we also are influenced by watching stories in which armed fighters go after each other on the streets?

MovieMonday: Stuber

Once you get past the idea that this is a serious action movie, "Stuber" turns out to be a lot of fun.  It's a bit of a hybrid -- a buddy/action/comedy with lots of cartoonish accents.

One of the buddies is a tough cop named Vic (WWF alum Dave Bautista) who wants to catch and/or kill the drug lord who has shot his police partner.  Dave's vulnerable spot is his strained relationship with his young adult daughter.

The other buddy is Stu (Kumail Nanjiani of "The Big Sick" and the "Silicon Valley" show.) Stu, aka Stuber (haha) works in a sporting goods store by day and drives an Uber by night to help the woman he calls his "best friend," and whom he secretly loves, to finance her cycling gym for women, which is to be called Spinster (haha).

Six months after his LAPD partner's death, Vic gets a tip on the whereabouts of the bad guy who killed her.  Unfortunately the tip arrives just after his Lasik eye surgery and many hours before he will be able to see well enough to drive or shoot his gun.

But Vic is motivated.  After a predictably smashing effort to drive his own car anyway, Vic drafts Stu and his Uber to take him on a night's journey through the Los Angeles underworld.

The pursuit takes the men to a gay male strip club where Stu and a performer have a heart-to-heart talk about relationships; to Stu's sporting goods store, where he and Vic battle each other with all manner of equipment; to a veterinary hospital where a shootout ensues while the vet walks dogs out back; to a battle at a sriracha factory with a predictable complication, and on and on.

Buddy comedies draw their energy from the pairing of birds of different feathers: In the crimefighting genre, there have been various male buddy teams -- think of the Rush Hour movies with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker and  "48 Hours" with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte.  Women's buddy movies seem to be more group events ("Bridesmaids, "Mean Girls," etc.), but "The Heat" with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy playing comically mismatched cops was well-received a few years ago.

The "Stuber" writer and director clearly decided to amp up the humor and not upset audiences too much with the violence that, yes, includes anonymous people getting shot but also many ornamental jokes woven into the plot.

This has upset some critics, who say the movie is too violent, but perhaps those critics haven't seen a Liam Neeson revenge movie lately.  By some lights, "Stuber" has more in common with Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo cartoons than, say, "Reservoir Dogs."

As someone who reads screenplays sometimes, I was impressed with the jokes worked into this script -- the inventive use of a room-service cart to try to frustrate a bad guy fleeing the scene of his crime, the rich vein of Uber-in-Los Angeles stories, and the electric Uber car running out of battery as the film nears its climax, among others.

Yes, the plot is formulaic, but it fits together better than, say, 2017's "Baby Driver," which was more implausible AND featured gruesome shootouts that killed many identifiable characters.

Actors Bautista and Nanjani acquit themselves well, particularly Nanjani, and we can expect to see more of Bautista over time, perhaps as we have with Dwayne Johnson.

"Stuber" probably will not be a great success at the box office, but if you like to laugh, you might enjoy it.



Note

The other complaint about "Stuber" is that the story has no strong female characters.  This is true, but in this film the two buddies carry virtually all the action.  Perhaps if there is a remake, a woman actor could play Vickie or Susan.

One actress who has a small part in the story is Mira Sorvino, who plays Vic's LAPD boss.  Sorvino won her acting Oscar more than 20 years ago, and it is believed that her promising career was torpedoed later by Harvey Weinstein after she rejected his advances.  She seems to have been working steadily since in smaller roles, but her career almost certainly would have been more prominent if Weinstein had been held to account many years earlier.