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Bad Boys (1995)
Rating: 6
Dir: Michael Bay
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Main Players: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Tea Leoni.
Story: US$100 mil worth of drugs is stolen from the police evidence room. Big mouths Smith and Lawrence are on to the bad guys.
Comment: With his success on TV with the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air", Smith takes on a very different role in this, Bay's directorial debut. Lawrence is here to give the 'yin' to Smith's 'yang'. Lawrence plays the family man, Smith's the playboy. Lawrence is fidgety while Smith is as cool as he ever gets. Both are, however, foul as can be; so don't show this movie to impressionable kids.
Bay has a certain style. Some people hate it, some might like it. One thing's for sure: He GETS your attention. There's a certain energy and style to all his movies. This is a good example of a frenetic pacing, in your face action-comedy which doesn't try to be anything else. Its target audience is teenagers, and a couple of young adults. You want to have a fun time watching things blow up and people dying from guns, exploding ether, or more guns; then you've gotta watch this.
Leoni is nice as the damsel in distress. It's nice you have a hoarse girl instead of those high-pitch screaming ones for a change. She's competent in this movie - and that's not to say that she's a good actress, just that she's not wrong here, that's all.
The other characters are your basic police and bad guy stereotypes. Everything you've ever seen in a cop movie is here. You have the slightly on-the-edge captain, the rivals who just love taking a cheap shot at the heroes, the bitchy Internal Affairs investigator, the sadistic bad guy, his goons, the stupid bad guy, and the motives for everyone's actions laid out nicely.
It's a very simple movie: Good guys going after the bad guys. You know who will triumph. But how they triumph, ah ... there's the F U N.
Conclusion: Watch it and unwind.