Bad Boys: Ride or Die has franchise cancer

Cancer is often described in layman’s terms as the body’s cells performing their function, just without the biological checks and balances that prevent them from interfering with or overtaking each other. I’ve found it a useful metaphor lately for franchise cinema and what can happen when it goes wrong: a film’s franchise elements metastasize and overtake a movie, trying at every turn to bolster the intellectual property, refusing to leave a scene without some kind of callback, meta-joke or attempt to Making collection possible.

Bad Boys: Ride or Diethe fourth in the series of buddy cop films that Michael Bay started in 1995, seems an unlikely victim of the franchise cancer. The fun of a Bad Boys film – as far as one can tell from a series that has a decade or more between its previous installments – comes mainly from watching the two uniquely gifted comedic leads, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, play out their antics under the direction of some of cinema’s greatest explosion lovers. But in drive or diethe joy of watching Smith and Lawrence’s characters get on each other’s nerves in incredibly explosive shootouts is constantly derailed as the script reworks all the elements from previous films or fits them into the grand scheme of this film.

Bad boys for lifeThe Belgian directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (Ms. Marvel) return for drive or diewhich follows on immediately from the previous film. Detectives Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) are still trigger-happy drug cops in Miami who play by their own rules. But they get more support these days from AMMO support team members Kelly and Dorn (recurring actors Vanessa Hudgens and Alexander Ludwig) and their immediate superior, Lt. Rita Secada (Paola Núñez). They also get frequent reminders to slow down. Mike, the looser of the two unpredictable ones, finally settles down and gets married, while Marcus has a near-death experience that leaves everyone telling him to go on a diet and relax. Unfortunately, this only makes him think he’s invincible.

This time, the partners discover a conspiracy to damage the reputation of their deceased captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano), who died in Bad boys for lifeIn their efforts to clear their former boss’s name, the two are portrayed as co-conspirators and are forced to flee. This is perhaps the first and worst failure of drive or die that nearly an hour of the film’s 115 minute running time passes before this – the film’s central premise! – actually happens. The second is the whole franchise cancer mentioned above.

drive or die never misses an opportunity to emphasize that this is a bad boys movie full of bad boys stuff. That conspiracy to frame Captain Conrad? It’s connected to the case at the center of Bad Boys II. A key clue as to who is behind it comes from Fletcher (John Salley), who you probably won’t recognize unless you’ve recently seen the first two films. “Bad Boys,” the 1987 Inner Circle hit became famous through the television show police officers and adopted as the theme song of the film series? You will hear no less than three versions of it. Mike and Marcus also sing it twiceand people keep calling them “the bad guys” like they’re the X-Men.

All this makes drive or die feel like a less successful version of Fast Five. This film took the four then-tonally disparate, loosely connected Fast & Furious films and formed them into a cohesive franchise with some timeline shenanigans and plenty of charisma. The Bad Boys films, however, don’t have enough raw material to make it a modern machine of eternal cinema. They have Will Smith and Martin Lawrence and a very good nod to Marcus’ son-in-law Reggie (Dennis Greene). That’s all.

Most of the blame can probably be placed on Chris Bremner and Will Beall’s script, which is poorly paced and riddled with cliches. (It’s pretty hard to keep your composure when Joe Pantoliano, in a pitch-perfect impersonation of Princess Leia Organa, leaves the Bad Boys a recorded message calling them “my only hope.”) Smith and Lawrence valiantly deliver some pretty terrible jokes, and the supporting cast, which consists of Bad boys for life is robust enough for government work, even when working with such unimaginative materials.

The direction of El Arbi and Fallah is the brightest aspect of drive or dieThe couple has improved since then Bad boys for lifewho show themselves to be eager students of Bayhem and are happy to employ camerawork that is as exciting as the gunfights it captures. Frantic drone shots race through gunfire, cameras pan down the barrel of a gun, and nothing ever stays still. It’s a bit overwhelming: restrained compared to Bay in their previous work, they go a bit over the top here. Their action shines brightest when someone is able to believably kick ass on screen, like Jacob Scipio, who returns as Mike Lowrey’s long-lost son from Bad boys for life.

However, the over-the-top gimmicks all serve to retrofit a sprawling franchise over a handful of films that never really had strong narrative connections. This is all the more frustrating given the few moments where Do understand what the Bad Boys movies are about. Like the shootout in the third act, where Mike is down and it is up to Marcus to motivate him – by repeating the lines of “Peter Piper” by Run-DMC with him.

This is the Bad Boys franchise working the way it should. It doesn’t need constant callbacks that build an elaborate mythology. It just needs two charismatic guys dishing out jokes of varying quality. It needs an irresponsible amount of gunplay. And it needs damn good moments like this one, where Martin Lawrence screams that he needs a “big bad wolf in the neighborhood” and the audience can shout right back, “It’s not evil that means EVIL, it’s evil that means GOOD.”

Bad Boys: Ride or Die Cinema premiere on Friday, June 7th.