The Michael Bay Retrospective Series - Bad Boys (1995)

Written In October 2013

So let’s get into the thick of it, with Michael Bay’s feature film debut, Bad Boys. The film stars Martin Lawrence and Will Smith as Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey respectively, a couple of buddy cop detectives, who dub themselves “Bad Boys” for their mutual love of the eponymous song by Inner Circle. Mike is a single womanizer who is a clear advocate of the fast cars, cool pads and hot girls lifestyle. His partner, Marcus, on the other hand is an inept husband and father who’s frequent late hours away from home and need to take care of his children, have lead him and his wife to have a significant lack of physical intimacy in their marriage, leading a great deal of jealousy for his partner’s life style. Mike however has some issues of his own for Marcus, given that he’s extremely tired of the way his partner tends to treat his personal property, such as eating extremely greasy fast food in his very expensive car, after his repeated insistence that he doesn’t want food in the car. The film takes place in Miami, Florida, with Marcus and Mike’s division being investigated by internal affairs at the moment, due to the theft a massive amount of narcotics being stolen from police headquarters and the department believes it was an inside job. Mike hires a former lover and informant of his, Maxine Logan, to have a look out for anyone who has recently acquired a massive amount of wealth who she may suspect. Maxine brings along her close friend, Julie, as dates of former police officer Eddie Domínguez.
When the crime boss they were all there to look for is seen killing a competitor, he quickly lets loose on Eddie, Max and Julie, with only Julie surviving. Julie attempts to get in touch with Mike, but instead is found to make contact with Marcus believing him to be Mike. Mike then fabricates a story where he must stay with Marcus’s family to look after them while Marcus himself is away on assignment in Cleveland. Misadventure after misadventure occurs for our trio, until we reach our climax, starting at Mike’s apartment with Marcus’s wife revealing a new awareness that Marcus was staying with another woman at Mike’s house, and the mob interrupting the married couple’s dispute with a hail of gunfire as they kidnap Julie. Julie is eventually rescued with the crime boss from earlier slain heroically by Mike in defense of his partner and Julie. In between the kidnapping and Mike’s vengeance we have crazy set piece after crazy set piece setting a clear tone for what is to come from this director.

To give some context to the two lead actors careers at this time, both of them had done a handful of movies before this and had popular tv shows in their prime (Martin and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air respectively), but neither one had had a big hit underneath their belt yet. But with this striking of the iron, both actors went on to become hot commodities in Hollywood, with Martin going on to become a well known comedic actor with movies like Big Momma’s House and Black Knight, and Will Smith going to have many action and later dramatic roles with films like Independence Day (directed by fellow disasterpiece pioneer, Roland Emmerich) and Men In Black. And to the film’s credit, the duo have great chemistry.

Also keep in mind, that not only was this film Bay’s feature film debut, after a career of directing music videos such as most famously, 1994’s “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” by the one and only Meat Loaf, but this was a pretty cheap film, especially when compared with the budget of his next two films. Bad Boys, along with all it’s spectacular explosions, only cost $19 million to make, compared with The Rock’s $75 million and Armageddon’s $140 million. Also interestingly, Michael Bay greatly disliked the script for this film, so he repeatedly encouraged Will and Martin to improvise such as the scene where a store clerk pulls a gun on the duo, believing them to discussing the sale and purchase of heroin pulls out a weapon and hollars “Freeze! Mother bitches!” prompting Will and Martin to respond in kind, with the two of them pulling out their own weapons and disarming the clerk. Will then tells the clerk “No, you freeze, bitch! Now back up, put the gun down and get me a pack of Tropical Fruit Bubbalicious.” Martin then adds “And some Skittles.” Now, say what you will about Michael Bay as far as his style of direction or personal/political views, it’s incredible that he could get such a competent action film together with no real script and barely two nickles to rub together.

All this in mind, I’m not insane about this film. It’s an entertaining film to watch when you have some of your buddies over and you all feel like playing something exciting while shooting the shit. But it’s of little substance, even as a brainless action picture. If you’re ever channel surfing and stumble of this film playing on FX, Spike, or TNT, I recommend you leave it on then. It has good performances from Will Smith and Martin Lawrence and can even be genuinely humorous at times, in an extremely sophomoric way. But pay this your full attention, you should not.

Overall, I give Bad Boys, a 2.3 out of 5.