Well, after looking at Bad Boys last week, it's only fitting that we take a gander at it's sequel, Bad Boys 2. If you thought the first one was insane, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Released in 2003, directed again by Michael Bay, and starring retuning actors Will Smith, Martin Lawrence and Joe Pantoliano alongside Gabriel Union and Jordi Mollà, Bad Boys 2 picks up the, ahem, story, 8 years later. This time our wise-cracking heroes are tasked with bringing down a Cuban drug lord, and investigating the trafficking of Ecstasy into Miami. This first film wasn't exactly restrained, but compared to this one, it was like watching The English Patient. Even by Bay's standards, it's wildly excessive, but is it enjoyably excessive? Let's find out.
The movie opens with the Miami Police Department's Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) tracking a shipment of Ecstasy coming in from Amsterdam. Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence) are sent in undercover to intercept the shipment and apprehend those responsible. Unfortunately, the raid goes awry in almost every sense of the word. Back-up is delayed, the radios malfunction, Mike and Marcus are caught amidst a gun fight, and Mike even manages to shoot Marcus in the ass. Ouch!
Marcus has been re-evaluating his partnership with Mike, deciding to transfer to another department, feeling it is best for himself and his family. But unbeknownst to Marcus, Mike has been dating his sister Syd (Union), and is afraid to reveal this, believing it will create further tensions between them.
If that wasn't awkward enough, Syd is an undercover agent for the DEA, also attempting to bust the Ecstasy shipments, which turn out to be run by Johnny Tapia (Mollà, who ironically played a drug dealer in Blow), who imports his drugs via boat and distributes them via nightclubs run be reprehensible Russians gangsters
So just like in the last film, Mike and Marcus bend, and even break, numerous rules in order to bust the bad guys and save the day. Insert every action cliché in the book: Car chases, shoot-outs, explosions, and the obligatory one-liners. All make it into this film, and Bay exploits them like there is no tomorrow. Watching the 2 films back-to-back, you would never guess the were made by the same person, the first one wasn't exactly subtle, but it had it's grounded moments. In this movie everything is fast paced, loud, in your face. The quiet scenes are truncated to make way for longer and louder action scenes. The plot is toned down so it doesn't interfere with the crashing and smashing. On some levels, it's incredibly annoying. It felt like when I was on the Khao San Road in Bangkok, where everything is up close and unrelenting.
But on other levels, it does what it needs to do: Give you an unadultered shot of adrenaline straight to the eye sockets. The brash nature of the action scenes actually do make them a lot of fun to watch, and nearly every single one of them is memorable; about the only parts of the movie that are.
Received by critics even less favourably than it's predecessor, Bad Bays 2 is a stupid film, but it's a knowingly stupid film. It isn't intelligent, but never gives the impression that it is. Bay is doing what he does best; directing mayhem and marketing it to the teenage demographic. While it is tiresome and utterly incomprehensible, I still enjoy it. It's the type of film that, with select friends and a copious supply of alcohol, makes the perfect night in. Bad Boys 2: Possibly the dumbest film you will ever admit to enjoying.
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