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Bad Boys II


By Joe MacLeod | Posted

Good lord, it's a Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films production. Don Simpson's been dead since 1996, but everybody in Hollywood is still kissing his ass, because the man behind Flashdance, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Crimson Tide, and Bad Boys is still putting dinner on the table with big, dumb movies about guys with guns. Bad boys, if you will.

What'chu gon' do? Duck, that's what; this ain't Legally Blonde 2, umkay? This is Bad Boys Roman Fucking Numeral II and it's the official summer blockbuster, ball-buster, car-wrecker, rump-shaker, gun-shooter, bomb-blower-the-fuck-upper, brain-destroyer box-office bullshit bonanza America's been waiting for.

Bruckheimer and the ghost of Don Simpson jam their hand up the fundament of director Michael Bay (Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor--whoops) and work him like a testosterone-soaked puppet for two and a half freaking hours of ultraloud, ultraviolent, ultraestúpido examples of Why They Hate Us, as in U.S. The whole Bruckheimer production-connection with television's C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation bears fruit with lots of corpses being poked, prodded, and otherwise invaded and defiled as props; slow-motion micro-closeups of bullets plowing through human flesh, scenery, and then more human flesh; and a bloody fistful of those impossible camera trips through ventilator shafts, down pistol barrels, and around and around one of about a kabillion blistering gun battles that will have John Woo and Brian De Palma wetting themselves and feeling violated simultaneously. You will, too!

And explosions! Goddamn! Shit blowing the fuck up, out, and Black Hawk Down all the time--like, if somebody talks for more than three minutes, you're sitting there just knowing sumpin's gonna blow up real good. And it does!

And Joe Pantoliano rocks a red toupee! Oh yeah, and not-so-fresh-prince Will Smith and "He so crazy," (no, really, crazy, dee-ranged) Martin Lawrence reprise their roles and make it happen again (even if you thought the first one sucked, it made stacks of coin) as cop buddies and bad boys who are all kinds of unconventional and shit but they put in the work, right, dawg? Big ups to good bad-guy actors Jordi Mollà and Peter Stormare, too.

Also, major product placements for Miller Genuine Draft, Pepsi, and the "club drug" Ecstasy. Plus, the Hollywood car chase has a new gag: flying automobiles spinning rapidly on their long axis, headed straight at stuff. Also, a large part of the sovereign nation of Cuba is destroyed by a Hummer H2. Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer: Bad Boys for Life.

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