Review: Bad Boys II (2003)

Bad Boys II is not Michael Bay’s best film (not by a long shot), but it may be the film that best exemplifies his trashy glory. It’s morally repugnant and beyond the pale in terms of good taste, but it’s also stunningly choreographed and frequently hilarious. The tension between Bay’s talent as a filmmaker and his problematic ethics is on full display here.

The story follows Miami cops Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) working to take down a Cuban drug lord, Johnny Tapia (Jordi Molla), who is flooding the US market with ecstasy. As in most Michael Bay movies, the story is mostly just an excuse for action set pieces and comedic interludes. There are frequent scenes of cops breaking the law and abusing suspects and criminals, garish subplots involving gangster rivalries between the Russians and Cubans, and a finale that sees the good guys take the law into their own hands and essentially start an international incident with Cuba. 

However, the narrative also plays into Bay’s ideological obsessions with machismo, individualism, and libertarianism. For instance, the final 30 minutes has Tapia flee to Cuba with Marcus’s sister, Syd (Gabrielle Union), a government agent working the case undercover who also happens to be dating Mike. When the government refuses to act, Marcus and Mike take matters into their own hands, with many federal agents and police officers signing up along with them. This narrative development reiterates Bay’s familiar theme that governments are useful at acquiring tools and resources, but that they cannot be trusted to do the right thing in a crisis. It takes highly-trained individuals (who often work in government or law enforcement) to have the courage to break the rules, do the right thing, and save the day on their own.

All of this is standard for a Bay film, as is the astounding action choreography, which takes the mosaic filmmaking style of Tony Scott and applies a considerable dose of sleaze. Bay cuts between shots at a feverish pace and relies on hand-held camerawork and frequent dolly pans to inject energy into every action scene; the interplay between shaky visuals and elegant camera movement adds to his frenetic effect. He even injects quiet moments with hyperactive energy, most famously when Marcus gets the call that his sister has been kidnapped and he declares to Mike that “Shit just got real.” Bay sweeps the camera around them on a circular dolly track, shooting at a low angle and in slight slow-motion to exaggerate the melodrama of the moment. For Bay, this shot personifies how heroism is supposed to look: men against the world.

Later moments in the film find Bay again building on visual influences from Hong Kong cinema, particularly the films of Jackie Chan. Not only is the mixture of slapstick and melodrama broadly influenced by Hong Kong action films, but the chase scene during the finale, which has Mike and Marcus riding through a hillside shantytown in Cuba, smashing through every hovel along the way, directly replicates the famous opening of Jackie Chan’s Police Story (1985). The scene proves that any critic who thinks that Bay doesn’t draw on film history in his work is mistaken.

However, that does not mean Bay is high-minded or intellectual. He distills imagery to its essence and plays every scene and shot for its emotional value, not any higher intellectual appeal. Thus, Bad Boys II is rife with crass humour and corn-dog sentimentality. Sometimes the two approaches mix in the same scene, such as when Marcus and Mike share a heartfelt conversation about Marcus’s erectile dysfunction that is accidentally projected across all the TVs in an audiovisual retail store. As Marcus opens up to his best friend about his personal troubles, shoppers watch the TVs in horror as they mistake Marcus’s words for a confession of a gay relationship with Mike. The joke is undeniably crass, even offensive, but it’s also expertly timed and proof of Bay’s sentimentality. He cares about Marcus and Mike’s relationship, even if he gets a kick out of imagining them as a gay couple.

That simultaneous approach—of machismo and sentimentality, of homoerotic affection and homophobia, of childish interests and undeniable technical mastery—sums up Bay as a filmmaker. Thus, Bad Boys II is among the most visually sophisticated action films of the early 2000s, but as an ideological product, it’s vulgar, bordering on vile. I understand why people hate this film, and Bay’s body of work as a whole, but I also cannot comprehend how a formalist cannot at least admire it as well. He’s too talented a filmmaker, and too influential a stylist, to dismiss outright. For better and for worse, he has helped shape blockbuster cinema as it exists today.

6 out of 10

Bad Boys II (2003, USA)

Directed by Michael Bay; written by Ron Shelton and Jerry Stahl, based on a story by Ron Shelton, Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley, based on characters created by George Gallo; starring Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Jordi Molla, Gabrielle Union, Peter Stormare, Theresa Randle, Joe Pantoliano.

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