Bad Boys: Ride or Die 4K 2024

A modern, highly specialized police unit faces the Bad Guys when a new threat emerges in Miami that can't be handled so easily.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die 4K Review
Cops Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) are mired in predictable domestic hardships. The former has managed to settle down and get married, the latter has discovered unpleasant facts about his failing health. Meanwhile, their police department is corroded by corruption - the late Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) is posthumously credited as an agent of a drug cartel. They realize they're caught up in a tangled game of corruption, where the captain's honest name is being besmirched by his killers. Now the duo itself has to go on the run, as the heroes fall into the crosshairs and dishonest cops, and insidious criminal groups.

Nearly 30 years have passed since the release of Bad Boys, and old-school '90s action movies are now safely written off as vestiges of the genre. However, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence don't think they're “too old for this crap,” so they go in for a fourth round of cop adventures - again successful according to both critics and the combined revenues of producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The third “Bad Guys”, released four years ago, can hardly be called a truly outstanding movie, but they at least managed to check the safety of a dainty movie brand - the fees that the previous tape that the current one is very solid, and from the chemistry of the aging couple Smith and Lawrence viewers are still not tired. Perhaps out of a banal sense of nostalgia.

The fourth film retains the familiar recipe - a colorful, bright, testosterone-fueled action movie, but with cops addicted to the merciless running of time. Here Marcus Burnett, the hero of Martin Lawrence, suffers from heart attacks, and his brave comrade Mike Lowry, played by Will Smith, is no less vulnerable - panic attacks torment right during the shootout. Retirement and quiet life is not far off, but the cinematography is not going to any rest, rolling out all the technical potential: long shots, sharp pirouettes of the camera, flying around the space, angles for every taste - from frantic close-ups to imitations of a first-person shooter. The fourth film resembles a modern remix of “Lethal Weapon” or “Mission Impossible”, organizing combat shows with the use of cars and helicopters. And some critics did not hesitate to compare the directorial duo of Adil El Arbi and Bilal Fallah with another creative tandem, even more egregious in terms of inventive madness - with Mark Niveldein and Brian Taylor, who created the cult “Adrenaline”.

Of course, all that cool action-equilibrium doesn't even compare to, say, the hangar whiz from the first “Guys” or the highway chase from the second. The union of Adil El Arbi and Bilal Falla is still relatively immature and is unlikely to seriously compete with Michael Bay - Hollywood pyrotechnician in his films literally juggled explosive mixtures, without sparing any powder. But they are quite able to, as they say, revitalize the franchise, creating a uniform mess of bullets whistling, police sirens, coupled with neon lighting of the clubs and hard-hitting jokes. With the latter, by the way, the movie has no problems at all: the chemistry of the police duo has a familiar dynamic, where Lawrence's nervous hero is contrasted with his cocky partner. And Smith, as in the good old '90s, reminds us that he's a comedy star, not a figure from Hollywood's sensationalized behind-the-scenes news.

The new “Bad Boys” is at the same time quite vulnerable to criticism and audience nagging: it's an uneven, excessive movie that deliberately steps backward - to the sultry entourage of the gonzo action movies of thirty years ago. But if the recipe for a perfect summer comedy without pretension is action packed with bullets, shots of gleaming Porsche and the charisma of the comic duo, then the fourth movie reliably fulfills its mission, rattling along with rumbles, sparks and the first symptoms of a heart attack. One can only hope that the franchise doesn't devolve into a big ensemble movie on the model of “Fast and Furious.” After all, based on the fees and popularity, “Bad Boys” is likely to retire soon.