Bad Boys For Life Movie Review: Will Smith & Martin Lawrence Return As If They Were Never Really Gone

Both Will Smith and Martin Lawrence just get into the skin of their characters as if they were always here.

Bad Boys for Life Movie Review Rating: 3/5 Stars (Three stars)

Star Cast: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Jacob Scipio, Alexander Ludwig, Kate del Castillo, Joe Pantoliano, Charles Melton, Paola Núñez, Nicky Jam, DJ Khaled

Director: Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah

What’s Good: It’s not trapped to follow the formula Michael Bay did 25 years ago, it marks its own route opening new paths to explore for the franchise

What’s Bad: Despite having a fresh take on the concept, it doesn’t really go all out with the entertainment restricting itself to a scattered screenplay

Loo Break: Totally depends on your love for the genre & franchise

Watch or Not?: If you’ve liked the first two, this will be a 4/5 just for you guys

User Rating:

Makers fast-forward 17 years from the last time we saw Miami detectives Mike (Will Smith) & Marcus (Martin Lawrence) together. Self-proclaimed ‘Bad Boys’ are reintroduced with a car chase but we see a changed scenario (inserts Jazbaat badal diye… meme) when they reach their destination. Now they’re ‘good’ bad boys as Marcus sees the birth of his grandson. He keeps his wish of retiring but Mike tries to convince him otherwise.

Mike gets shot, Marcus prays to god for his recovery and promises to never resort to violence again. But, it’s at the interval where the movie starts. Both of them decide to go in together for one last time to find out about the person who shot Mike. They unfold many hidden truths which leads to the killing of many men around both of them. Where this will end and who’s the gunman? The story leads you to explore many such layers.

Bad Boys for Life Movie Review: Script Analysis

For the first time, we’re seeing an actual format of storytelling going with the buffoonery of both the leading stars. Till now it’s always has been, “Let’s kill the bad guys because we’re the bad boys” without any strong story backing the claim. But this time around, when both the bad boys aren’t actually bad and are ageing, we see them entertaining not just with their presence.

Despite having everything designed on a platter, I don’t know when will Sony start making their films ‘look’ good. The colour tone they follow is close to reality but very dull in order to keep you engaged. Most of the action sequences in the second half are shot in the dark which just takes away the ‘wow’ factor.

Bad Boys for Life Movie Review: Star Performance

Both Will Smith and Martin Lawrence just get into the skin of their characters as if they were always here. Will keeps his style intact, whereas Lawrence still has the quirks left. It was a nice surprise to see both of them accepting that they’re not as fierce as they were before. It strengthens the connection with them.

Supporting cast was very dull as I don’t have a single name to mention anything about their performances.

Bad Boys for Life Movie Review: Direction, Music

It all started in the oddball mind of Michael Bay with Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah continuing the legacy. Adil & Bilall doesn’t really follow the template of the original Bad Boys but picks out the best things out of those adding their entertaining inputs to it. They succeed in reviving a franchise that had no hopes of coming back.

Lorne Balfe has been doing the ‘Michael Bay’ kind of films for years now. But he’s getting repetitive and it’s the same case for Bad Boys For Life. He did excellent in Mission Impossible: Fallout but failed to impress in Underground 6. Even in this one, it’s all just unsynchronized noise.

Bad Boys for Life Movie Review: The Last Word

All said and done, Bad Boys For Life, apart from their lead stars, doesn’t carry forward anything from its predecessors, it’s a fresh take on how this should’ve done. Popcorn, don’t-use-your-brain entertainment!

Three stars!

Bad Boys for Life Trailer

Bad Boys for Life releases on 31st January, 2020.

Share with us your experience of watching Bad Boys for Life.