Director: Michael Bay
Writers: George Gallo, Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland
Cinematography: Howard Atherton
Editor: Christian Wagner
Music: Mark Mancina
Notable Cast: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Tchéky Karyo, Kim Coates, Frank John Hughes, Vic Manni, Theresa Randle, Joe Pantoliano, Marg Helgenberger, Nestor Serrano, Michael Imperioli, Karen Alexander, Kevin Corrigan, John Salley
Much like those services in the suburbs that will come to your house and pick up the dog poop in your yard, Michael Bay takes a lot of shit. And maybe some of it is deserved. His Transformers movies were a fucking abomination of the mythos. As an avowed Transformers freak as a kid, by the time his films came out, I had no affinity left for the franchise. I loved the toys in the 80’s, and loved the animated film in 1986 (blew my fucking mind when they just started killing Transformers left and right. Ask any kid into Transformers at the time and they’ll all tell you the same), but by the time Bay’s films came out, I was firmly in adulthood and hadn’t seen any Transformers anything in a couple of decades. But I still remembered what I loved about the cartoon, and his films did not capture that, at all. Made it mainly about the humans, which is… I mean, come on, I’m here to see big fucking sci-fi alien robots, not some bullshit about a kid and his parents! And the overly complicated design of the Transformers was fucking criminal, and I’m not even talking about the “flames on Optimus,” which set the Internet alight back in the aughts. The robots looked terrible. And aside from Pain & Gain, a truly brilliant film and one of the top ten movies of the 21st century (not joking), I have not liked any other Bay film, even a little. Except for his very first film.
Funny story, Bad Boys opened the same weekend as the Liam Neeson film, Rob Roy (eh), and I actually paid to see Rob Roy (!), and then when that borefest was over, I snuck into Bad Boys, which was set to start in just a few minutes. Easily one of the greatest sneak ins I’ve ever had at a movie theater. The other was when I snuck in to see the last hour of Titanic (only part worth watching), and just as Leo “DiCrapio” sinks under the waves for the last time, and Winslet is calling out to him, the film got stuck in the projector and melted right before everyone’s eyes. It was fucking amazing. Lots of people were all emotional and crying at the maudlin shit on screen, and when that happened, there was confusion, which then turned to anger and rage. Imagine sitting through that 3 hour piece of shit and then the last 20 minutes or so is ruined like that? What. A. Nightmare. Guarantee no one in that theater can ever see that movie the same way again. Correlary to that is when a buddy of mine went to see Alien 3, in the theater right next door to the one I saw it in, and somehow the reels were all out of order. But he didn’t realize it and just thought the movie was a confusing jumbled mess. Funnily enough even people who saw the reels in the correct order felt much the same. Not me, but people.
But before we get to Bad Boys, let’s fast forward and talk about the sequels, Bad Boys II and Bad Boys For Life (and incredibly enough they made a fourth one, which at this writing has not been released yet, but rest assured, it looks like utter dogshit as well). Actually, on second thought, let’s not talk about the sequels. They’re fucking awful. Everything that makes Bad Boys work so well is completely absent from the follow ups. Shitty action, shitty writing, shitty jokes, shitty bad guys, shitty music, shitty casting. Typical Simpson/Bruckheimer crap. Was never a fan of those two as a producing team. Despite being a huge Tony Scott fan, I was never a big Top Gun or Beverly Hills Cop II guy. And the less said about the rest of their ouevre before (and after) Simpson died, the better. Though Bruckheimer’s Con Air is pure fucking genius. I have to give him that.
But… Simpson, Bruckheimer and Bay did deliver one absolute knockout in their time as colleagues. And that movie is Bad Boys. A perfect 90’s action comedy on multiple levels. But is it evident in the 1ST 5 Minutes? Let’s take a look.
1ST 5 MINUTES
Much like how the Moroder music playing over the Universal logo in Scarface sold me on that film almost immediately, Mark Mancina’s score over the Columbia logo has the exact same effect. Now, no one would ever confuse Mark Mancina for Giorgio Moroder, including me. But the simple fact is Mancina crafted one of the greatest action scores of all time for this film.
A disciple of Hans Zimmer, back when Zimmer was still a fucking mad genius film composer. One of the unfortunate circumstances of being me is constantly being out of tune with whatever the masses are into at any given moment. I loved Zimmer back in the late 80’s and 90’s, when no one really gave a shit about him. And now that he is a beloved film composer, I think his scores are uniformly terrible.
At some point when the century turned from 20th to 21st, his style changed and transformed (no pun intended) into banal film score crap (the ghetto that Tarantino so brilliantly described at the Oscars that one year). But the Zimmer of Black Rain, Drop Zone and K2? Shoot that shit right into my veins please! And Mancina studied well at Zimmer’s knee, as this is one of the best non-Zimmer Zimmer scores ever composed. Lamentable that it was never released as a proper score until many years later. Really hate when a soundtrack comes out, as it did for Bad Boys, and just contains all the shitty songs that barely even register when watching the movie, while leaving off the music that actually defines the film. Oh well. In any case, Mark Mancina did a tremendous job with the score, and it is evident not only throughout the entire 1ST 5 Minutes, but the entire film. Classic 90’s action sonic landscape. And I’m here for it.
Then we immediately get our first taste of the look of the film, brought to us by Bay and his masterful British cinematographer, Howard Atherton, who lensed two of my favorite 80’s flicks, Fatal Attraction and Black Rain, the latter of which is easily Ridley Scott’s best film (u mad bro?). One thing we need to be aware of in this film, is that Bay loves his filters. I mean take a gander at this first shot of the sky and clouds. Look, I’ve been to Miami and South Florida many, many times in my life, and I can confidently say the sky has never looked quite like this. Realistic? Not at all. Dope as hell? Fuck yes. The look of this film, the interesting shot selections, the dutched angles and quick editing are all apparent right away.
After some quick shots of a Porsche 911 racing down the highway, we get the first look at our two stars, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, as Detectives Marcus Burnett (a nod to Don Johnson’s undercover persona in Miami Vice, perhaps?) and Mike Lowrey, respectively. Within a minute we get tons of character details: we know Smith has money as this is his personal car, that he has a real weakness for hot women, that Lawrence is married with kids, sexually frustrated as a result, and that these two have obviously known each other a long time based on their easy and quite funny banter. Martin Lawrence is one of the funniest cats to ever exist, and he doesn’t disappoint in this film. Not only in these 1ST 5 Minutes, but the entire film is filled with laugh out loud moments, mainly courtesy of Lawrence. I’d love to credit the screenwriters, but it is obvious there was lots of improvisation on set.
Martin drops some French fries, compelling Smith to pull over and demand he clean it up, which leads to more funny banter (the line about not liking their treatment at Denny’s is hilarious, despite probably 99% of people watching the film in 2024 not even knowing what that’s a reference to), and ultimately, a carjacking. Just look at this shot of the carjackers pulling up behind Smith and Lawrence. LOOK. AT. THIS! There’s so much haze/smoke you can’t even see down the street on the right of the frame. It looks fucking glorious and is probably my Favorite Shot in the entire film. I want to live in a place with dope orange filters and smoky haze in the background. A constant source of depression for me is being forced to live in actual reality and not cinematic reality. I wish I could live inside my favorite movies. One of the reasons I positively adore the severely underrated Last Action Hero is for that very fact, imagine being able to transport yourself into the movies? Goddamn. But be that as it may, I’m stuck here on Earth Prime with the lot of you.
The carjackers send out a honeypot to distract our titular heroes while they sneak up with guns drawn, ready to steal the Porsche. And wouldn’t you know it, one of the carjackers is played by the great character actor Kim Coates! You see, this is what I’m here for. When a movie has great casting, it does so much of the heavy lifting, and when they even bother to fill tiny roles with amazing actors, you know you’re in great hands. And so it is here. Kim Coates is a legend in my mind, mainly for his role as the henchman Chet, in The Last Boy Scout. He’s in Boy Scout for maybe 5 minutes and is incredibly memorable in his scene with Bruce Willis where he gets his nose pushed up into his brain. The Last Boy Scout is another classic 90’s action comedy with that same hazy/smoky cinematography. Can you tell I’m a fan of 90’s action photography?!
In this intro, we see how Smith and Lawrence operate as partners on the police force. They use humor to defuse situations, and then fake arguing with each other to throw the bad guys off, right before they flip the scene on its head and have both carjackers at gunpoint, followed by two laugh out loud punchlines, “You like that shit? Wesley Snipes, Passenger 57! Now give me a motherfuckin’ handi-wipe!” and “Now let’s hear one of them jokes, bitch.” Great shit.
After this we get the rest of the opening credits, with sumptuously filtered shots of Miami as the sun sets and the city lights begin to glow, set to the amazing main title theme by Mancina. It’s propulsive and further sets the tone for the rest of the film. In these 1ST 5 Minutes, you are provided everything you need to know about the movie that will unfold. All the elements of what make this movie great are present in these 1ST 5. Well, everything except one key component, which shows up almost exactly right after the 5 minute mark.
The rest of the flick
Tchéky motherfucking Karyo, aka the best European accented bad guy since Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Karyo is fantastic, legendary, iconic as the villainous Fouchet. He chews the scenery with relish, has some of the best lines, and brings an interesting intercontinental dynamic to the proceedings. Right off the bat, he shoots one of his own guys to set up a distraction for the very cops whose precinct he’s about to loot for all the heroin they have from a recent bust. I always love the ridiculousness of a bad guy acting this way. Like, who the fuck is going to keep working for him knowing you might get shot at any moment because you’re not really aware of what the whole master plan is? I don’t know, I’ve never been a criminal, nor have I ever been in a gang, but it seems like it might hurt recruitment, no? How do you even assemble a crew of henchmen in the first place?
Which brings me to another amazing aspect of this movie, the casting of the henchmen! One of the main reasons why modern action movies suck diseased dingleberries, is due to the shitty casting of the bad guys. If you look, and I mean truly look, at the great action films of the 80’s and 90’s, the casting of the henchmen is key to the film’s success. I’ve already mentioned Die Hard, then you got Commando, RoboCop, Total Recall, The Last Boy Scout, Point Break. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but what do all those action flicks have in common? Fantastic casting of the bad guys! They’re not big roles usually, so hacky filmmakers don’t realize the importance of these parts, but they are so so crucial to an action film’s success.
And here, not only do we get the genius casting of Karyo, who at this point in time I only knew from his role in La Femme Nikita, which he’s incredibly sweet in (it was a revelation seeing him take on the role of Fouchet), but then you get the duo of Vic Manni and Frank John Hughes as Ferguson and Casper, respectively (the fat old guy and the short guido with the moustache). These guys are AMAZING in this movie and provide some of the best laugh lines in the film. Incredibly hard to overstate their importance to this film’s success. They’re SO good together.
Same goes for the great Kevin Corrigan as Fouchet’s chemist, Elliot, in charge of “cutting” the product to make it even more valuable. It’s a tiny part, and Corrigan was a relative nobody at the time, but his talent was still obvious, he was cast for a reason. Him and Karyo have a fantastic scene together in the hull of a ship they’re using as a location for their drug lab, producing the great line from Karyo, “I’m not a chemistry teacher, ELLIOT!” The way Karyo says that line is so fucking good.
And then you have the equally fantastic Michael Imperioli, also a relative unknown at the time, as sometimes confidential informant, Jojo. The way Lawrence and Smith play off of Imperioli in their intimidation/good cop bad cop routine is comedy gold. When Smith is acting the bad cop role trying to extract information, with Lawrence trying to “help” Jojo out is hilarious. Smith is solid at what he does, but he’s Will Smith, I mean, yeah, I loved him in Six Degrees of Separation, but outside of this movie and Michael Mann’s Ali, he kind of sucks. Martin Lawrence owns and makes this movie what it is. He’s a once in a generation comedic talent, and casting him in an action role took massive balls. Bay has those balls. To spare. Without Lawrence, you’re not reading this article, cause this movie would have came and went with nary a peep.
And then the supporting roles on the good guy side are equally impressive. You got Joe Pantoliano in what should be a cliché role of the exasperated Captain, tired of his two detectives and their endless hijinks, but Joey Pants imbues the role with heart, passion, and a real blue-collar flavor that suits the role perfectly. He too is given some good laugh lines, and towards the end, his desperate, at wits end “I’m calling all cars here…” is great.
And then Theresa Randle as Lawrence’s wife. I fell in love with Theresa Randle in Abel Ferrara’s King of New York, and it continues here. Like the Pantoliano role, she essays the role of the thankless wife, but because she’s so talented, she brings it alive and feels real and lived in. She too has some great laugh lines. They really spread the love around here with the dialogue (even Smith’s Doorman, played by Mocha Joe himself, gets his own laugh lines).
As Mike Lowrey’s sometimes girlfriend, Karen Alexander as the ill fated Max Logan really impresses here. Don’t remember ever seeing her in anything else, though. She doesn’t have too much heavy lifting to do (aside from that gym scene I guess! HEYOOOO), but she is drop dead gorgeous and brings a great vulnerability to the role. Her death scene with Fouchet and his thugs is extremely effective, and her acting is a big reason why.
And as Lawrence and Smith’s fellow narcotics detectives, Nestor Serrano and Julio Oscar Mechoso, as Detectives Sanchez and Ruiz, respectively, are absolutely hilarious. Their racially tinged banter with Lawrence and Smith produce some of the biggest laughs in the film. Again, this cast is insane. SO MANY parts are filled with incredibly good actors born to play the role they were given. Except one part…
Tea Leoni. She’s really the only misstep. She’s so bad. Hard to explain why without getting in “trouble” with the idiotic hall monitors, but you know what? Don’t give a fuck. She has a man voice. Exactly zero sex appeal. Horse teeth. But most importantly, she can’t fucking act! She’s fucking terrible in this. It’s almost enough to ruin the movie, and I have to admit, she always grates whenever I do a rewatch. She just sucks. No idea what David Duchovny was thinking here. Was this Bay’s decision? Did he think she was hot? All I’ll say is, she’s no Megan Fox.
Hollywood is littered with actresses like Tea Leoni, who all of a sudden come out of nowhere because scumbag producers inexplicably want to fuck their brains out, and then when they’re done with them, they discard them like yesterday’s trash and they just disappear (or get relegated to headlining some awful network TV trash). Just to say this is to invite scorn and invective. Dear reader, I am not condoning this behavior nor do I have any power to stop it or commit such scumminess myself. I am merely explaining how the industry works. Some of you may be surprised to find out there’s a segment of people who seem to get angrier with those who point out the underbelly of Hollywood than the pieces of shit who actually propagate that shit out there.
Most actresses in Hollywood have about a 10 year shelf life. Pay attention when you go and watch movies from back in the day. I almost always recognize the male lead, but oftentimes the female lead is someone I’ve never even heard of. They had their 10 year window and then disappeared, but because you weren’t even alive when that time period was, you have no frame of reference and they’re just a nobody. It’s sad, but hey, at least they had a window. Most people who move out to L.A. would KILL to have a 10 year window, as most of them flame out, and either move back home, or stay and become homeless, or addicted, or doing high end escort work at “poker games” or all of the above! Hollywood is a dark fucking place, as Blonde so adroitly dramatized.
My wife was friends with this chick, beautiful, smart, she ended up marrying the kid from Baywatch, we’d see her in Daily Mail at premieres and shit, it was wild, then they broke up and a year later she’s living out of a shopping cart, strung out in an alley off Hollywood Boulevard. Like I said, dark shit.
But back to Bad Boys. The action in this film is oddly fantastic. I say oddly because so many action films have the most boring, unmemorable action scenes that tire instead of thrill. Not so with Bad Boys. There’s multiple standout action scenes, including the first instance of that classic Bay shot where he circles the camera around the protagonists as things are looking dire.
But my Favorite Scene has to be the one inside Club Hell (the whole sequence is great), when Lawrence is attacked in the bathroom. The fight scene is brutal and goes incredibly hard. Sometimes, in action comedies you lean too much on the comedy. But here the action often takes a hard-edged tone, which plays well as a contrast to the comedic elements. Both hew closely to realism. The comedy is never slapstick or gross, it’s all human. And the action, while obviously stylized, feels like it hurts.
Take the end shootout in the hangar and subsequent car chase on the tarmac. Not sure I’ve ever seen a better example of combining genuine laughs with hardcore action before. Maybe The Last Boy Scout? And speaking of that end chase on the tarmac, I love the way it is shot and edited, and when Fouchet’s car slams against the concrete divider, you really feel that shit. And how great is that wild four barrel gun he attempts to use at the end? Endlessly inventive and creative flick. God, the 90’s were fucking great!
Speaking of the 90’s, despite the political correctness that was just beginning to take hold, you could still make raunchy jokes, and racial jokes, and whatever the fuck you wanted to make fun of. That’s why my Favorite Line is when Lawrence and Smith are following a lead, they arrive at a house and attempt to announce themselves, Smith has the classic line, “Don’t be alarmed, we’re negroes.” Martin’s retort to him is hilarious, about Smith having too much bass in his voice, which will scare white people, so Lawrence does his stab at it and it is hilarious. “We were wondering if we could borrow some brown sugar?” So fucking good. I love this goddamned movie.
Everything that makes this movie great is illustrated in the 1ST 5 Minutes. There is absolutely NO WAY you would love the 1ST 5 and not love the rest of the movie. No way. And if you think the 1ST 5 wasn’t funny or well-acted or incredibly cast or fantastically shot, you will most certainly NOT like this movie. Either way, as I always maintain, your reaction to the 1ST 5 Minutes of a film will let you know, in no uncertain terms, whether a movie is for you or not.
Trust your instincts.
The One Sheet
Not terrible, but also not very good either. You definitely are told to expect orange filters, and there’s definitely going to be some action and palm trees, but to me, this is a boring image for such a good movie. And I guess Tea Leoni is there to sell sex? Jesus fucking Christ, like, come on! I would never buy this to frame and hang on my wall, so this poster is, in my mind, a failure.
Simpson and Bruckheimer, baby! What a dynamic duo! I remember reading that Don Simpson would put on a new pair of black jeans every day, and would never wear the same pair twice. What a dope. New jeans fucking suck. The more worn they are the more buttery they get. The dude had shit taste all around it seems. But hey, he fucking made it and was a true titan of the industry, at least for a time. Except he’s dead now, and I’m still walking around, so who’s the loser now, huh? HUH? Alright, seriously though, Bad Boys fucking slaps, as the kids say. Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments below.
Otherwise, see you in a couple of weeks.