If you saw 2020′s “Bad Boys for Life” the third installment of the “Bad Boys” franchise, you know it had a post-credits sequence that promised more shenanigans from Miami cop duo Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowery (Will Smith). “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” proves the filmmakers kept their word.
A brief series history is in order. Director Michael Bay made his feature film debut with the first “Bad Boys” back in 1995. It had the reckless mayhem you’ve come to expect from a Michael Bay film.
Bay also directed the atrocious 2003 sequel “Bad Boys II,” the rare movie to offend me with its violence. I didn’t care for the original film, but I outright hated the sequel.
Seventeen years later, the third installment’s directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (credited as Adil & Bilall), ushered in a kinder, gentler “Bad Boys” movie. I didn’t buy it for a minute, but at least I wasn’t bored. Co-writer Chris Bremner attempted to give the partnership between Marcus and Mike more emotional depth, which made the stakes feel higher when the bullets started flying.
El Arbi, Fallah, and Bremner are back for “Ride or Die,” which turns the bad boys into framed villains with $5 million bounties on their heads. They’re wanted for murders they didn’t commit, betrayed by someone on the force you can easily predict.
This by-the-numbers hat tip to “The Fugitive” even gets its own Tommy Lee Jones clone in the guise of FBI agent Judy Howard (“Better Call Saul”’s Rhea Seehorn), who relentlessly pursues our heroes with more than one score to settle.
Like the last movie, this one opens with a high-speed chase through Miami that turns out not to be a hot pursuit. Instead, Mike is rushing to get to his wedding. He’s marrying his physical therapist, Christine (Melanie Liburd).
Marcus is happy that his partner is finally settling down. But their tardiness doesn’t stop him from demanding a pit stop at a convenience store to get a ginger ale. Mike gives him 90 seconds, which Marcus spends buying unhealthy snacks he shouldn’t be eating due to his medical issues.
The delay intensifies when a random guy picks the wrong day to rob the store. After much of the back-and-forth bickering we’ve come to expect from our heroes, the situation is comically (and violently) diffused.
By the way, you can see most of this scene in the trailer. It’s the best scene in the movie, and it unfolds before we see the title card.
That forbidden convenience-store hot dog is a bigger plot device than you think: At the reception, best man Marcus has a heart attack in the middle of his toast. The resulting out-of-body experience looks like the projectionist accidentally swapped in scenes from a Pure Flix Christian movie. Except instead of Jesus, we get Joey Pants himself, Joe Pantoliano.
Fans know Pantoliano has played Captain Conrad Howard, Marcus and Mike’s always flustered boss, since “Bad Boys.” Fans also know Howard died in “Bad Boys for Life,” shot to death by drug cartel member Armando (Jacob Scipio), who turns out to be Mike’s long-lost son.
While I’m discussing the previous movie’s plot, I should mention Advanced Miami Metro Operations (AMMO), the police unit run by Lieutenant Rita Secada (Paola Nuñez) that employs tech expert Dorn (Alexander Ludwig) and weapons pro Kelly (Vanessa Hudgens). Armando and the AMMO folks all show up in this movie without explanation, so now you know who they are.
Before sending him back to the land of the living, Captain Howard tells Marcus it’s not his time to die. Marcus somehow interprets this statement as meaning he’s impervious to death, which makes him more reckless than usual. Somewhere between heaven and Earth, Marcus also discovers he and Mike are “soulmates” who have shared past lives together.
After going for emotional heft last time, the Bad Boys franchise is now playing the spirituality card! I didn’t buy it for a minute, but, again, at least I wasn’t bored. (I was, however, taken aback by the unwise allusions to Smith’s Oscar night slap debacle and the 1996 incident where a dehydrated Lawrence wandered into Los Angeles traffic.)
Did I mention that Captain Howard has also been framed as a dirty cop? It’s up to his bad boys to clear his name. Numerous action sequences ensue, one of which inexplicably takes the point of view of a first-person shooter video game. People are killed by machine-gun fire, airplane propeller, and albino alligator, to name just a few agents of death.
Mike must also work through his fears of losing the people he loves most, including Armando. This, too, involves ceaseless carnage.
Throughout the mayhem, Marcus and Mike bicker like an old married couple. While this interplay has always been the best element of the “Bad Boys” universe, Smith and Lawrence look disinterested this time. It’s as if they’re getting too old for this [expletive], to use a phrase from a much better buddy-cop movie series.
★★½
BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE
Directed by Adil & Bilall. Written by Chris Bremner, Will Beall. Starring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Rhea Seehorn, Joe Pantoliano, Jacob Scipio, Paola Nuñez, Alexander Ludwig, Vanessa Hudgens, Melanie Liburd. 115 minutes. At AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, AMC Causeway, suburbs. R (Whatchagonna do? Endure lots of killing and swearing.)
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.