Rent Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)

Bad Boys: Ride or Die (aka Bad Boys 4) review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

The fourth Bad Boys film might be the first to find the right groove to be the best of the batch. The first film was a decent buddy-cop dynamic for Michael Bay by posing Will Smith opposite Martin Lawrence before veering heavily off the rails with the over-the-top and often absurdly mean sequel. Bad Boys For Life, the third film, arrived years later and, despite having new directors, felt like a tired dynamics of “look how old these guys have gotten,” laced with so many tired tropes of revival sequels. Thankfully, Ride or Die has honed this franchise enough to present a film that finds a strong balance of incredible action sequences and a charming dynamic of its leads.

It helps that Smith and Lawrence have had some time to get back in the saddle with the last film. Their back-and-forth feels perfected in this film, as in the opening sequence, where they bicker over junk food while stopping a robbery. The directing duo of Adil & Bilall have also had some time to find what works and what doesn’t. They see the most clever ways to the convenience store scene, zooming in on guns, tilting the angles, and forcing hotdogs into the foreground. That energy carries the film through its lesser plot elements and lacking thematic focus.

The plot is okay because it’s serviceable for a buddy cop picture. Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence) find themselves once again tracking down cartels after the good name of their dead cop friend is besmirched with corruption. The two soon find themselves unearthing untrustworthy officials and vicious men seeking revenge. There’s solid tension that mounts with the mystery, even if it comes through such simplistic clues of QR codes and multiple video instructions by the slain cop. It also gives Mike a chance to reconnect with his estranged son, who was arrested at the end of the last movie. It is just a setup for fun and fast-paced running, gunning, and funning throughout.

This film works on that level of slowing down enough to smell the smoke of explosions. The direction is stylish enough when Miami feels less like a washed-out city of summer and more like a neon playground, bathed in sharp colors for nearly every scene. The action is intense enough that there’s more faith in scenes of exploding cars and constant gunfire to have some fun. A highlight in the climax is when the camera swings from the POV of a pistol’s line of sight to a POV of Smith holding the gun. The fact that such an inventive scene was a practical case of mounting a camera rig on Smith that he could swing around during the carnage is such a cool piece of action filmmaking.

What I admired most about this film was how it tried to make up for the shortcomings of previous Bad Boys movies. Mike and Marcus discuss more significant internal conflicts of panic attacks and existential crisis beliefs, which are intriguing but more of a tease. Still, it doesn’t harp on these aspects, considering they’ll be undermined by the action scenes soon enough. The jokes feel more clever and less like Gen-X taking a stab at Boomer Humor bits about scorning the next generation. Even better, there’s a more meaningful acceptance when Marcus’s son-in-law Reggie is finally respected as a Marine, having been spat on by his elders since Bad Boys II. But in Ride for Die, he proves himself where it counts, and the old guys have to learn to step aside for a more accomplished young man.

Ride or Die succeeds, whereas many other Bad Boys films have failed. It always felt like there had to be compromises, where the extreme action of Bad Boys II could be favored over the stumbling cruelty of the protagonists. There’s none of that head-tilting and squinting to see the appeal of Bad Boys 4. It finds a way to make the banter charming and the action exciting without sacrificing much. Could the buddy cop story be better? Sure. Does it have shades of the lesser Lethal Weapon 4? A little bit, yeah. But as a summer buddy cop movie that wants to have fun and get your blood pumping, this is a doozy of a crowd-pleasing romp that was a genuine joy to watch unfold.