The Michael Bay Retrospective Series - Bad Boys II (2003)

Written In October 2013

And now we come to what is considered to be Michael Bay’s second worst movie, right smack dab between Revenge of the Fallen, and my last review, Pearl Habor. We’ve come to Bad Boys II, starring once again Martin Lawrence, Will Smith and Joe Pantolliano, along with Gabrielle Union, Peter Stormare, and Jordi Molla. For some historical perspective, let’s take a look at what some of these guys were up to at the time.

The original Bad Boys was released in 1995, since then, Will Smith had become a super star, starring in blockbusters like Independence Day, Men in Black, Enemy of the State and Men in Black II, and had even been nominated for an Oscar with Michael Mann’s Ali, a biographical film of the famed boxer Muhammad Ali. The Will Smith we know and love today had just arrived, and he had arrived in spectacular fashion. But what of funny man, Martin Lawrence? Well, while his filmography may not be quite as prolific as his costar, he’d been in some pretty damn noteworthy projects as well. Just four years after Bad Boys the man got to costar with African-American comedy legend, Eddie Murphy in a film called Life. He released his biggest claim to fame, Big Momma’s house. And he’d even gotten to do his second stand-up film in 2002's Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat. Yes, I’d say it would be fair I said that Lawrence had arrived as well. And while Joe Pantolliano, who played the thankless role of Captain Howard in both films, was still just a lowly character actor, he had gotten to do a few more note worthy things since the last movie. He’d returned to another role as Deputy Marshal Cosmo Redfro in US Marshalls, who originally played 1993’s The Fugitive. He’d also given the critics a one two punch and helped launched the careers of three prolific directors with The Wachowski Brothers’s (now brother and sister) The Matrix and Christopher Nolan’s Memento. He’d even done a couple of lesser known roles such as voicing the penguin Martini in Fox’s Christmas Special, Olive the Other Reindeer, and Ben Urich in 2003’s Daredevil also made by Fox. And if you’ve read my other four reviews, you know exactly what Michael Bay was doing.

Interestingly, this was also a big year for Michael Bay in that it marked the beginning of Michael Bay’s Producing credits, starting with 2003’s remake of the 1974 horror movie classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was massacred two more times there after with 2006’s prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Begining, and this year’s second reboot Texas Chainsaw 3D. But I’m not here to chat about Michael Bay remaking movies I never saw to begin with, no, I’m here to chat about movies directed by Michael Bay, so let’s get to the plot summary.

The movie starts with a kind of neat opening credits sequence showing how illegal drugs are made and shipped. During this, we meet Tactical Narcotics Team Leader (Henry Rollins) of a drug raid on Ku Klux Klan rally, where we are reintroduced to our heroes, Detectives Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowery (Will Smith). When the detectives break their cover to jump on the Klansmen, their radios go faulty leading to one Klansman pulling a gun on Marcus. Mike trash talks long enough for a separate Klansman to try to shoot Mike, Marcus quickly warns him in time to dodge the shot and fire at the two Klansmen, freeing is partner. We get our first action sequence where Mike accidentally shoots Marcus across his rear end. After the shootout, it’s revealed that the raid only scored two sandwich baggies of blue meth, much to Rollins chagrin. We then cut to our main villain, a cartel boss, who implores his crew to change the schedule so that the cops won’t catch their shipments again.

After this, we get a brief sequence at a club, where the owner (Peter Stormare) is chatting up the cartel guy from on the phone, and has to briefly hang up to drop out a guy who’d just OD’d on meth. We then head to Marcus’s home where we meet his sister Syd (Gabrielle Union) who we find out is dating Mike, without Marcus’s knowledge. We also find Marcus is keeping a secret of his own, he’s being transferred to another city, and isn’t like to be seeing much of dear old Mike. We then find that Marcus is growing tired of Mike, and feels that his status a family man is threatened whenever he comes over to hang out. When we hear from Mike’s informant that there’s a job for them, we cut to drug running facility where we see that Syd is apparently working for the drug runners as a money launderer. Though the partnership does not come off as an easy alliance.

We then watch Syd ride to a drop off that is quickly interrupted by another group of felons who then try to hold them up which starts a thrilling action set piece through the highway. When Marcus and Mike finally catch up to her and save the woman, we find out that Syd is an undercover agent who’s been working the case for five months. Marcus being Marcus, reacts childishly. After getting chewed out by their captain, the boys head over to Mike’s informant for the whereabouts of the drug lord they’re after, when the junkie refuses the boys cause some destruction of property to convince him otherwise. Taking the hint, he gives the boys what they wanted. The boys follow the hint and engage in a shoot with some Haitian gang bangers, when only one is left, they interrogate him and snag their leader’s video cam. They take it to an electronics store to get the footage off of it, leading to quick bit of humor when the owner’s son accidentally puts porn footage on all of the store’s TV. And then more humor, when the video room is put on the TVs while Marcus explains to Mike that the shot in the ass caused nerve damages preventing him from getting an erection, the exchange is said in a manner which out of context sounds like them recounting their latest sexual experience together.

After their latest hijinks, the boys head back to the station where we find out the name of their target is Johnny Tapia, they tap his phone lines and manage to find his address through a call to pest control. The boys head over disguised as exterminators. While planting wires in the house to observe Johnny, we discover that Marcus has terrible fear of rats, which causes him to almost blow their cover repeatedly. Meanwhile, Johnny begins a sit down with Alexei, the Russian club owner from earlier. We then find, Johnny won’t be listening much, and Alexei won’t be saying much, because Johnny is uninterested in negotiating. Alexei quickly does what is requested of him, through much reluctance.
The boys are soon found out thanks to Mike, so the duo book it with a man’s severed finger and a full basket’s worth of paper shreddings, which they give to their department people for analyses. They then approach two rival department members to get the tapes from their wire tapping, causing us to later learn that Syd is dating Johnny as part of her cover, much to Mike and Marcus’s unamusement. They quickly confront her where Marcus theorizes that the DEA only only approached her because she’s attractive. Mike then humbly offers that the three of them work together which Syd agrees to do. There after Marcus explains to Mike that all the men Syd has ever dated were dumb lunkheads who barely knew how to wipe their own behinds, Mike reacts with great discomfort. Following this, in order to get some info they confront one of the white supremacists from earlier in the film, who goes by the name of Floyd Poteet (Michael Shannon). While at Floyd’s dock with Syd, she and Mike admit to Marcus that they are in a relationship, Marcus eventually admits he does not find Mike worthy of courting his sister, much to Mike’s heartbreak. We then enter another chase creating an action sequence where the boys not only fail to retrieve the cargo containing more meth, but lose their only witness during a struggle between him and Mike. After all this, Mike takes a somewhat deserved grilling from Captain Howard about the destruction of property and the overall PR nightmare that he and Marcus are causing him. Marcus then finally admits he’s taking a transfer out the department and after the case doesn’t want to be Mike’s partner anymore.

After a quick scene where the boys patch things up over putting the fear of God into a 15 year old boy set to take Marcus’s daughter on a date, they head over to a morgue owned by Johnny Tapia for an unsanctioned drug search. The boys walk away with they’d searched for, but in a freak accident, Marcus winds up accidentally taking some meth, making cause for further hijinks as Mike informs the Captain of their discovery at his home. We come to our climax where Alexei returns for vengeance, Syd is found out by Johnny, and the cops begin an assault on Johnny’s morgue. Alexei is quickly taken out by DEA members, but Syd is kidnapped. Meanwhile, Mike and Marcus encounter a brief hiccup on their end that quickly leads to a triumph. When hearing about his sister however, Marcus wants to go after his Tapia for his sister. While the DEA members say they can’t do this officially, they reason they can stage an off the books mission. So our duo head for Tapia’s base of operations in Cuba with a motley crew comprised of members of the Miami Police Department Narcotics Division, DEA, and CIA, the last one there at the personal request of Captain Howard. We find out once in Cuba that this rescue mission will be even trickier, given that Tapia is best buds with Castro and uses the military like personal security.

We get our final action sequence with the Bad Boys running through Tapia’s mansion, grabbing Syd and a Hummer H2, running through Cuba with Tapia in hot pursuit and landing on the outskirts of Guantanamo Bay. Marcus and Syd manage to get to safety, but Tapia catches up to Mike, putting a gun to his head. Syd tosses her weapon onto a mine causing it to blow Tapia’s henchman to hell. Marcus uses this moment to blow Tapia’s brains out, in a scene mirroring the beginning of the movie. The credits start, but we get a quick scene back at Marcus’s home with our Bad Boys chatting up when Marcus’s dog breaks the pool Mike bought for him. The two laugh it off singing the wrong words to Bad Boys by Inner Circle and credits role.

For most the movie, while I didn’t think it was anything special, I thought it was fun and entertaining. While I thought some jokes were poorly handled and a lot of scenes didn’t really seem to go anywhere, I really didn’t have a huge problem with it. In his review for the film, the late great Roger Ebert noted he had an issue with the scene in the film where Marcus begins patting down his daughter’s date and starts interrogating him, Mike then barges in on the scene with a bottle of liquor in his hand and joins in on the interrogation for the sake of winning his friend back, at one point Mike pulls out his weapon and waves it around the boy pretending to be drunk. He does this for the sake of intimidating the poor boy. The men even go so far as to legitimately threaten him, and ask if he was a virgin or if he had ever had sex with a man. The boy replies yes to the first question, and no to the second, Mike then asks in reply to his answer to the second question, if he’d like to. Mr. Ebert expressed wonder about why this scene was in the movie, and even questioned the integrity of Bay, Bruckheimer, and even Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. While I didn’t think that much of the scene at first, I genuinely have to wonder, why did this scene have to exist? Why did we have to watch two men threaten a 15 year old boy for simply trying to take a 15 year old girl to the movies? Especially when the girl’s mother seems to trust him and even think highly of him. But I can let go of one out of place scene that was meant to be comedic, and may even be considered darkly comedic by some people in the context of an R-rated action-comedy intended for mature audiences. But something that really bugs me about this film, is how little Michael Bay really seems to think about certain things. What police department in their right mind, would send two African-American detectives to a drug bust at a rally FOR A FREAKING WHITE SUPREMACIST GROUP! You know they’re going to be armed, you know they’ll be aiming for them in particular, why especially would you send such arrogant men to a rally of people who could hate them so easily just because of their skin color?! But whatever, I can go with that in the context of a movie that I know isn’t supposed to be taken seriously I guess. It’s stupid, but I’ll let it go I suppose. But then, you have a group US agents with city policemen going down to another country’s territory, a country that we are not on good terms with mind you, to rescue another agent, without contacting the US military base stationed there? Are you asking for a death wish? Do you truly want to rescue that agent or just get yourself killed? And you don’t send a team of 40 guys to work with Cuban rebels to rescue said agent, you send 1, maybe 2, maybe even 3 guys to rescue them.

I could go on and on about that ending, but I won’t. This film is stupid in the extreme, it’s redeeming factors are solely it’s action pieces. Say what you will about Michael Bay, but the man can film action very well. Some other pros for the film are things like the chemistry between Smith and Lawrence, they still work great together. And also the fact that Gabrielle Union is nice to look at. My cons for the film that aren’t involving what happens in it, are the fact that Michael Shannon gets wasted again! Come on Bay! Also, the villain, while he can be entertaining, is apparently a well respected actor and director in Spain. If you’re going to the trouble to get a respected foreign actor, use him well, don’t just make him some camp bad guy.

I’m giving Bad Boys II a 1.9 out of 5.