Bad Boys 2

  Plot Summary

Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are narcotics detectives working in Miami. They are trying to stop the flood of drugs into the city, especially the supply of ecstasy tablets which originated in Amsterdam. Their method of, shoot-first-then-ask-questions, gets them on the evening news, much to the annoyance of their captain, but they haven't managed to catch the drug dealers. They discover that a vicious gang-leader is trying to take over the Miami drug trade...

Review

As in the original, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence team up again in this action/comedy sequel. They play the bickering detective duo, Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett. This time they are hunting down a drug lord and his gang. The movie is very much in the "leave-your-brain-at-home" genre and in this respect the scant plot is fairly unoriginal. There is plenty of action scenes; shootouts, outrageous car chases, explosions etc. These scenes are cleverly filmed with unusual camera angles, although there are some obvious computer generated bits that take away from the action.

The two detectives are at odds with each other and spend most of their time bickering. This lends itself to plenty of jokes and there are loads of funny "one-liners". Must of the comedy works but there is some badly timed "tasteless" jokes that seemed to have sneaked in from another movie like American Pie or Dumb and Dumber!

Its not the outrageous action scenes or the unoriginal story or even the bad jokes that ruin the movie it is more to do with the way these elements are often mismatched in the movie. For example there are a few gory scenes that Hannibal Lector would have been proud of! Unfortunately these scenes are incompatible with the comic mood of the movie. It's difficult to bring explosive action, blood and guts and comedy together in the one movie! Bad Boys 2 simply doesn't get the balance right.

Will Smith plays the maverick gung-ho detective, while Martin Lawrence is his whingeing sidekick. They bounce one-liners off each other but didn't have the same rapport of some other police duos, like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon. Perhaps the whingeing of Marcus compared to the self-assurance of Mike was a bit annoying after awhile!

Bottom Line: An uneven movie that has some great action scenes but little or no plot.

Reviewed by Niall Quinn, Premier Movie Reviews 2003

Genre: Action/Comedy

Certificate: 15's

Director: Michael Bay

~ Main Cast ~

Will Smith

Martin Lawrence

Jordi Molla

Gabrielle Union

Peter Stormare

Theresa Randle

Joe Pantoliano

RATING

ONLY IF YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO