Bad Boys: Ride or Die review — Will Smith, Martin Lawrence give it their all, but action franchise is running on empty

One of the last true moviegoing experiences I had in 2020 before the movie theaters (and the entire world) shut down was seeing Bad Boys for Life on a Friday night. There might not be a better example of how much fun going to see a movie with a massive crowd can be than that as people were laughing and cheering as Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) bantered back and forth as they kicked some ass and saved the day.

With the fourth entry in the franchise, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, if you have a good crowd filled with fans of the franchise you're likely going to have a similar experience. Though the lulls are greater and in that intermediary it is plain to see the Bad Boys are running on empty.

While Lawrence and Smith continue to have a fun dynamic and there are a handful of payoffs that long-time fans will enjoy — particularly one scene with Reggie (Dennis Greene) that we won't spoil here — the plot and characters are razor thin this time around. Then in terms of the action, while there are a couple of cool sequences, more often than not it is overly flashy to the point of being hard to follow.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die begins as Mike is about to do something few thought would ever happen, get married to a woman named Christne (Melanie Liburd), who makes her debut in the franchise. It doesn't take long for marital bliss to be interrupted as the late Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) is framed to be made look like he worked with the Mexican cartels for years. Mike and Marcus know this can't be true and go about proving his innocence with the help of Mike's son, Bad Boys for Life bad guy Armando Aretas (Jacob Scipio). However, Mike, Marcus and Armando are soon forced to go on the run when the corrupt individuals who framed Captain Howard turn law enforcement against them as well.

There really isn't that much more detail to the plot of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, as crafting a coherent, tight plotline was definitely secondary. The motivation behind the corrupt officials driving the plot is only given in an easy-to-miss moment in the final act. The same goes for the main villain, played by Eric Dane, who is just a generic, uncharismatic bad guy.

So much of the weight of the movie is put on Lawrence and Smith's shoulders. To be fair, they still have a great chemistry with each other and can play these characters in their sleep after nearly 30 years, but the filmmakers didn't give them enough to do. Marcus suffers a health scare early in the movie that is supposed make him a health risk but instead is just used to have him deliver a series of jokes and act crazy with diminishing returns. They tried to give an interesting arc to Mike, who must deal with panic attacks as his previous bad boy antics now must contend with caring for the people he loves, but it's not given a truly satisfying conclusion.

The action is the other part of the movie that the filmmakers had to capitalize on to have people forget about the plot holes or lazy writing of the movie, but that is also a disappointment save for a few moments. The crazy thing is the most memorable fight scenes don't even involve Lawrence and Smith, with Scipio taking on more of the action responsibilities, possibly because both stars are approaching 60.

Seemingly in an effort to make up for that, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, depict action scenes with Lawrence and Smith with so much camera movement, drone work and other effects that it honestly is hard to follow what is going on half the time. They're shooting their guns, but at who? Are they hitting anything? It's all to create the impression that is a lot going on and it's intense, but it's more confusing than anything.

Be that as it may, I won't say that if you go to watch Bad Boys: Ride or Die you are not going to have a good time; the crowd I saw the movie with definitely had a blast with it and it's easy to get swept up in an atmosphere like that. But after leaving the theater you'll realize how hollow everything in the movie really is.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die releases exclusively in movie theaters on June 5 in the UK and June 7 in the US.