Twenty years after "Lethal Weapon 4" bled the last bit of blood from Riggs' and Murtaugh's (kidney) stone, we get something of a in-spirit remake in "Bad Boys For Life," a movie that follows a lot of the beats of that film, arguably the weakest in the series, but with much less in the way of returns.
Like its predecessor, "Bad Boys" sees its straightlaced buddy cop co-protagonist become a grandfather, while his slightly-unhinged counterpart chews on the idea of whether it's time to settle and slow down. Of course, here we're discussing Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith), respectively. Before the movie ends, we will unveil secret, hidden parentages, vengeance-seeking martial arts experts, and a glimpse at perhaps a next generation of heroes.
That's not to say "Bad Boys for Life" is a carbon copy of "Lethal Weapon 4," though it borrows more than a few tropes from that film, but the result is decidedly similar from the standpoint that it's not quite unwatchable, but it's much closer to that status than it is "good."
New directors Adil and Bilall aren't exactly first-time directors, but this is certainly the duo's first big-budget Hollywood flick. They produce a reasonable copy of Michael Bay's signature style, if a smudged camera lens went unnoticed for the entire shoot. They never quite capture the gloss and sheen that is vintage Bay, but their quick cuts and camerawork that fetishizes both the female form and the sleek vehicles our main characters use to race recklessly through city streets just like their predecessor.
And Lawrence and Smith, well, are still Lawrence and Smith. Their chemistry is as easy as it was in 1995, and particularly in the much-better 2003 sequel. Their we're-too-old-for-this-shit schtick isn't totally uncompelling, but the journey the directors take them on mostly is, despite a series of average-at-best action sequences.
The narrative, as it were, is bland and generic, with the wife of criminal Mike once took down (Kate del Castillo) escapes from prison, and unleashes her son Armando (Jacob Scipio), who has trained all his life to become a machine capable of taking down police officers.
When Armando wounds Mike, Marcus finally follows through on his perpetual threat to retire, leaving Mike a wannabe avenging angel forced into a new-age cop unit called AMMO. Led by an old flame of Mike's (Paola Nuñez), the group is a collection of Millenial overachievers, down to their reliance on technology and penchance for self-reflection and therapy. You can practically hear them mouthing "OK, Boomer" every time Mike and Marcus open their mouths.
The team, and the film itself, is clearly looking to set up a more expanded series of "Bad Boys" films starring AMMO and another unnamed character whose fate clearly is set-up in the style of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or perhaps the Fast and the Furious movies, right down to the mid-credits sequence.
But "Bad Boys" succeeds or fails on the strength of its leads, and the schtick that made the first two films so charming...kinda-sorta works here? There are multiple callbacks to previous films, including Marcus's daughter's date, who is now a soldier looking for her hand in marriage, and a few other parallels and plot devices that feel way too on-the-nose to really work.
But the action, right? It doesn't ever really approach the panache by which Bay assaulted our senses in "Bad Boys II" (which is probably Bay's best film not sharing a name with a former pro wrestler), but it is mostly at least passable. Of course, in a franchise known for its incredible excess, anything less than "how did he do that, Rog?" is damning with faint praise.