Bad Boys (1995)

Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Téa Leoni, Joe Pantoliano, Theresa Randle, John Salley, and Kevin Corrigan 
Grade: A

I don’t care what the critics say. I’ll always be a huge fan of Bad Boys.

Summary

In Miami, Florida, detectives, partners, and best friends Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) ride in Mike’s expensive car through the city, with Mike giving Marcus shit for eating a burger and fries and making a mess. They pull over after Marcus drops some fries but when they do, two guys try to car jack them, not knowing they work for the Miami Police Department. After some bickering between Mike and Marcus, they use it as a distraction, and they both disarm the men and arrest them.

That night, a group of unknown criminals break into the secure police vault at the department and steal $100 million of seized heroin, kill a “cop” to use as a decoy, and injure another while doing it.

The next morning, Marcus wakes up with his wife Theresa (Randle), and they have breakfast with their kids. Mike shows up soon after to hang out. Following Theresa stopping Mike from telling her kids about his most recent “date”, they get a call from their consistently angry Captain Conrad Howard (Pantoliano) to come to the station.

This is where the see the $100 million of heroin that’s been stolen directly from the vault. Mike and Marcus are personally affected by this because this was their career bust, and it’s all gone. Captain Sinclair (Marg Helgenberger) of Internal Affairs shows up and is worried this could get out to the public, but Captain Howard tells her they’ll get it back before anyone finds out. Before Sinclair leaves, she states she thinks this was an inside job. As Mike and Marcus question fellow detective team Sanchez (Nestor Serrano) and Ruiz (Julio Oscar Mechoso) where they were the night before, Howard tells them the one cop that was injured during the job is okay, but he’s got nothing to tell them. Mike and Marcus correctly guess that the first part of the bad guys’ plan was to use the decoy to empty the department, but they didn’t kill the real cop because they know the whole force would be on them. Howard puts them on the case and tells Sanchez and Ruiz to back them up with whatever they need. All the men come to the conclusion that it couldn’t have been Carrera’s (the guy Mike and Marcus busted for the heroin initially) men because they’re not smart enough to pull off a job like this. Even so, Howard sends Sanchez and Ruiz to find out who installed the ventilating system the bad guys got through.

Once they leave, Howard admits to Mike and Marcus they can’t rule out this being an inside job. Basically, they got 72 hours before the FBI and the DEA come in, blame them, and shut them down. The clock is now running for Mike and Marcus to come up with answers. After Mike and Marcus question former drug dealer Jojo (Michael Imperioli) and he gives them nothing, they go to a boxing gym to talk to Mike’s ex-girlfriend and go-to informant Max (Karen Alexander). Without hesitation, she agrees to keep an eye out on the scene for any new rich-looking customers.

Later, they go back to the department and secretary Francine (Anna Thomson) informs Mike that Sanchez found out the air conditioning contract went to Manuel Arrona of Key Biscayne. They drive over to Manuel’s place, break in, and find the man dead. They look at some of the papers he has over his desk and find out he was a bit of a gambler that owed some money. In the car, Marcus talks about how they may all be out of a job because they go nothing so far, but Mike will be fine because his family left him a lot of money and a lot of the people in the department think he’s some rich kid playing a cop. This offends Mike because he’s always wanted to be a cop and works harder than everyone. The situation is calmed though after some more discourse between the two, leading to them singing the lyrics to the Inner Circle’s “Bad Boys” together. Max hangs with her escort friend Lois (Heather Davis) and asks if she’s talked to any newly rich people that seem sketchy. She notes that some desperate guy has been calling her every two hours looking for new girls in town. She offers Max the job because it’ll be a “quick $2,000”, but Max has plans with her friend Julie (Leoni). Lois suggests she take Julie with her on the job. Even though she isn’t a working girl, it’ll be easy money. Lois points out that the guys will probably be so drugged out of their minds they won’t be able to perform, so Max agrees.

Later, Julie goes along with Max as a favor because she already owes Max for letting her live at her place. Max admits she’s doing this for Mike, and Julie isn’t surprised because she knows Max is in love with him. They show up to Eddie Dominguez’s (Emmanuel Xuereb) place at the Biltmore Hotel and he’s clearly high as hell, creeping out both girls within a minute. Once Julie goes to the bathroom to waste time, the real criminals show up. The leader Fouchet (Tchéky Karyo) shows up and is pissed Eddie took a couple of keys of heroin out of the stash to party with. He kills Max and has his boys kill Eddie, with Julie witnessing the whole thing from the upstairs. The bad guys spot her and chase her to the roof, but Julie is able to escape after jumping off the roof and into the pool. Fouchet tells his men to find who she works for and where she lives. Later that night, Mike and Marcus show up to the crime scene. They see the dead body of Eddie, an ex-cop, with the heroin. Sinclair will be happy. There were no signs of forced entry either, but they do find evidence of another witness from lipstick on a glass. Soon after, they find the dead body of Max, and Mike is heavily saddened. Since he knows Max worked for Lois, he goes to find her. He does it alone though, telling Marcus to get a ride with Howard because he clearly needs some time to himself. At Lois’s place, she is murdered by one of Fouchet’s men. Mike shows up right after and is attacked. Since he already called in back up though, the guy leaves after he throws Mike through a window.

Back at the station, Howard gets a call from Julie who desperately wants to speak to Mike because she witnessed Max’s death. Since she’ll only talk to Mike because Max trusted him with her life, Howard has Marcus impersonate Mike to take the phone call and get her address. Julie has never met Mike, so she doesn’t know what he looks or sounds like. Marcus gets all the information, but Howard wants Marcus to go to her place instead of Mike because they don’t know where he is, and time is of the essence. Reluctantly, and because he’s threatened with not being able to see his wife for a month, Marcus heads out to meet Julie as Mike.

As soon as Julie lets Marcus in, she doesn’t believe he’s Mike and tries hitting him with a bat. Eventually, he’s able to grab it from her and explain vague details as to how he knows Max. Once he points out the bad guys probably know where she lives and are coming to get her, she relents, though admits he’s not what she expected. As they collect her dogs, Marcus tells her they can put her in protective custody, but she just wants to deal with “Mike” because Eddie Dominguez was a cop. Even though Marcus assures her Eddie was an ex-cop, the bad guys blow the door down to come for them. A chase ensues and they escape, though the bad guys are able to get their license plate and Marcus can feel it. Julie still refuses to go into police custody and demands to go to “Mike’s” place. So, Marcus takes her to Mike’s actual condo. After bribing and threatening the doorman Chet (Saverio Guerra) for a key, they are let in. Marcus gets Julie acclimated with everything, as well as himself because he doesn’t know where anything is, and she starts to calm down. He has to go back to the department though, so he leaves her alone. On the way out, he tells Chet to have Mike call him as soon as he gets in and to not let him upstairs. He goes home to check on his family, but Theresa makes Marcus sleep on the couch because she smells the perfume on him and sees his wedding ring is gone (he hid it to play the role of Mike when he met Julie).

The next day, a concussed Mike meets up with an angry Marcus because Mike didn’t answer his phone calls.

After getting reamed by Howard for the public shootout Marcus was involved in, Marcus and Howard let Mike in on Marcus acting as Mike to meet Julie. Since they already built-up trust with Julie, Howard orders Marcus to continue acting like Mike for the time being and to continue their mission because she’s the only person that may be able to identify the shooters and get Sinclair off Howard’s back. According to Julie, the shooters are going to make their drop in four days, so they have four days to solve this whole thing. Sadly, Mike and Marcus might end up killing each other before they even get to the bad guys.

My Thoughts:

The buddy cop film is one of my favorite subgenres. Though a lot of them can be pretty similar in tone and characters, it’s always fun seeing how well matched the two lead actors are to see if they can still make things exciting. Well, Bad Boys is a great example of making the classic gimmick work.

Will Smith’s Mike Lowrey is a cool, carefree ladies’ man that lives a lavish lifestyle because of a rich inheritance. Martin Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett is the argumentative type who’s married with kids and is currently dealing with a sexless marriage, making him even more of an angry person than he already is.

They are two roles tailor-made for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, and they absolutely nail it.

Their chemistry and rapport are impeccable and every argument they have (which is a lot) is funny. Though Smith’s coolness is given next-level treatment (this is prime Will Smith, so it makes sense), they also give Marcus some time apart from him to get as much attention comedically, and it makes up for it. Additionally, he gets some cool action sequences himself. You can argue this is the only film out of the three Bad Boys movies where Mike and Marcus look like equals, and I think that’s why it’s my favorite. As the sequels came, Mike’s role became bigger because Smith’s stardom superseded Lawrence’s soon after their sitcoms ended and the writing in the sequels acquiesced to this.

Marcus trying to play off being Mike was great stuff by Lawrence, and I loved seeing how mad Mike was getting of Marcus’s handling of the situation. When Theresa walks in on Julie and Mike, and Marcus tries horribly talking himself out of the situation, I was dying. You can tell these two are having a lot of fun on set, and it mixes in well with the fast-paced setting of Miami, Florida. Though Smith and Lawrence were well entrenched in their respective sitcoms (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Martin respectively), they are able to make the transition to cool guy action heroes as soon as they step on the screen. The humor is effortless too. Remember, this is Smith and Lawrence in their primes! Comedy is their element! Their shows were dominating television, but Bad Boys was the movie where they start to feel themselves and see how far they can push their stardom as leading men when they take themselves a little more seriously. It works too. In 1995, both of these men were untouchable, and Bad Boys is still a cool ass movie to this very day. On top of that, Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett are easily one of my favorite cinematic teams of all time, and one of the best buddy cop duos ever. The action they find themselves in is incredibly exciting and pushes the movie to a whole other level.

As much shit as Michael Bay gets for going overboard, I think his work with the Bad Boys franchise has always been great, especially for a superfan of action movies like me. Make no mistake about it though, Bad Boys is peak Michael Bay. It’s got all the classic fast cuts, colorful and unrealistic cinematography (that still works considering the setting), insane action sequences and car chases, and explosions galore. For a movie like this, he was the right director. Did Will Smith need to run around in a chase with an unbuttoned shirt? Probably not, but that’s classic Michael Bay! Without him, we would’ve never gotten the classic “hero” shot, with the camera circling around Mike and Marcus following one of the pivotal action sequences of the movie. Sure, Bay uses it a lot, but I would argue it’s a staple of the Bad Boys films, so much that we see it in each sequel.

The biggest surprise was Téa Leoni. Despite the star power and the character of Julie close to being a stereotypical one, she doesn’t get overshadowed at all. She’s in distress from seeing Max’s death, but she’s not the usual “save me” type. Right away, she’s put in an awkward position after thinking Marcus is Mike and having a hard time believing he’s the “smooth” one when he’s really the angry partner of the two trying to act smooth. It’s a funny dynamic and since we know the characters and the actors’ personas before the movie even begins, this interaction with Julie and Marcus is hilarious. When she starts messing with Marcus and flirts a little bit with him, only to confirm later what she thought she knew (that he isn’t Mike), we see the personality of Julie flare out when most of the movie is about the fun-to-watch duo. It’s a nice diversion from the plot and creates for a lot of humor and sexual tension, with Leoni’s charisma and presence being brought out while working with the two overbearing personalities instead of shying away. Though it made no sense for her to go to Club Hell and start a shootout, she’s kind of unpredictable and is fighting for her spot, so it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility for her character. In a way, it parallels Téa Leoni trying to barge into the screentime that Smith and Lawrence are getting and making it work. She’s very likable, incredibly sexy, and nothing she does feels forced or contrived. I enjoyed how different her character was compared to how the usual female role would be in a movie like this.

Outside of our three stars, all the characters are pretty much clichés. This includes Captain Howard, Captain Sinclair of Internal Affairs, the other staff our heroes don’t get along with but come through when they’re needed, and the villain. They’re all the exact same character you’ve seen in every other cop movie. I honestly couldn’t tell you what Fouchet looks like right now, and he was the main villain. The only one that really comes out of it looking good is Joe Pantoliano who’s actually pretty funny. The scene where he’s shooting baskets at the gym was hilarious (“I was getting them all in before you showed up!”). Most of his role is devoted to him yelling at Mike and Marcus for causing destruction wherever they go, and rightfully so, but Pantoliano is pretty good at it. He does give off the aura of someone who’s been captain for a while and is sick and tired of the bullshit.

I find arguing funny, and Bad Boys is built on this. From Marcus giving Mike shit after he’s kicked out of his house, to the two fighting when Marcus thinks Mike is with his wife, to Marcus arguing with former Detroit Pistons center John Salley, to Captain Howard giving shit to both of them, each argument is funny and filled with punchlines due to the incredible delivery of Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Joe Pantoliano, and a lot of the actors working with them. When Téa Leoni’s Julie is added to the mix, things get even better. Out of all three Bad Boys films, she’s easily the best tertiary star added to the cast.

When you add this to some electrifying high-octane action, an incredible buildup, and a top-notch payoff, you get one hell of an action comedy that is a defining film for the genre and for the 90s as a whole. The scenery, the music, the comedy, and Will Smith and Martin Lawrence making one of cinema’s best teams gives us Bad Boys: one of the most entertaining buddy cop films you’ll ever see. Very few have done it better with this level of chemistry.

I still smile thinking of Mike yelling, “Now that’s how you supposed to drive! From now on, that’s how you drive!”.

Fun Fact: The original idea for this movie was for it to star Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz, with the title being Bulletproof Hearts. Can you imagine how different this movie would’ve been had those two been the stars? Also, Arsenio Hall was offered the role of Mike Lowrey before Will Smith. He turned it down which he later (obviously) regretted.