Bad Boys II [2003]
Director: Michael Bay
Actor: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Gabrielle Union, Theresa Randle, Joe Pantoliano, Peter Stormare, Henry Rollins
Let me start out by saying that when I walked into the movie theatre last night, I fully expected to get the same as in Bad Boys, just more of it. And I was right. Bad Boys II is almost the same as Bad Boys except that everything’s a little more. More beautiful women (Theresa Randle as hot hot hot!), more guns (bigger, mostly), more explosions, more funny shit, nicer cars (Ferrari instead of Porsche) and just more insanity. If you liked Bad Boys, then you’ll like this. And if you’ve seen Bad Boys, then you sorta know what this film is going to be like so I’m not going to bother with breaking down the story.
A few points that I found interesting:
- Yesterday I watched the first ten minutes of The Cell, and it struck me that it has been a while since I was so immersed in a film that I was sad to see it was over. I remember being a kid and not wanting the films to end because they were so cool. I started to wonder why that was, and when I was watching Bad Boys II, I got a pretty good idea…
I think it has to do with the way movies – especially action films – are cut; everything’s fast cut, changing angles and POVs, places and sometimes even time so fast that you can’t really settle into the scene. You’re constantly changing directions and the director keeps you in a constant state of confusions, which, I suppose, could be seen as a good thing, considering the almost pro forma state of action and violence.
- I was very pleased to see the introductions of a bad boy Yardie gang into this film, because, to be honest, it’s a threat that has yet been overlooked by most cinema. Sure, there was Predator II and Marked for Death, but the films portraying these gangs, gangs with such self-sacrificing drive, mysticism and predispostion towards violence in real life that they often just come off as ludicrously portrayed while in all actuality it’s closer to fact than fiction.
- One of the things that they stepped up more is the goofy inaptitude of Martin Lawrence and the “I’m an over-the-top cop with a badge, a gun and a trustfund” coolness of Will Smith. Smith couldn’t do anything wrong in the entire film – even though Lawrence’s character criticised him for killing potential suspects, etc. they really didn’t do a good job of conveying how much of a lose cannon Smith’s character was – and Lawrence wasn’t able to do anything right. And even when he did, all the way near the end, Smith’s “That’s how I want you to shoot! From now on you _always_ shoot like that!” bit just didn’t accentuate the fact that it was Lawrence’s dedication and not Smith’s bad-assedness that saved the day.
- As seen in the opening shot of Panic Room, Michael Bay made use of a camera technique where it seemed the camera was moving through tight holes in objects. In Panic Room it was still rather crude – I think Fincher came up with it, or something – but Bay perfected it during a shoot-out in a Yardie hide-out with the camera spinning around a wall, with on one side Smith and Lawrence, and on the other side a squad of pissed of Yardies. Very well done.
- Oh, right, I almost forgot; this film is gratuitous in it’s violence, gore and it’s want for shock. It wasn’t bad, but it did make me cringe sometimes…because of what they were doing to their rating, rather than their display of blood and brain.
