“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is Thankfully Ride, Not Die
★★★
I always love moments when the filmmakers, faced with the potential to kill off a side character for cheap easy drama, opt to reveal the character is a total badass instead and give the audience a showstopper instead. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” has one of these moments.
Directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, “Ride or Die” brings Will Smith and Martin Lawrence back as detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett. Some time has passed since the events of “Bad Boys For Life,” which saw the death of Capt. Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano) at the hands of Lowry’s son, Armando (Jacob Scipio). When Capt. Howard is posthumously framed for a crime he didn’t commit after some suspicious funds find their way into his bank account, Mike and Marcus race to clear his name and in order to do so, must team up with the only person who knows what really happened: Armando.
Along the way, we are treated to familiar faces (including John Salley as Fletcher and DJ Khaled), fresh faces (Melanie Liburd as Christine, Mike’s wife, and Rhea Seehorn as Judy, Capt. Howard’s U.S. Marshall daughter), stylish action sequences, and Mike and Marcus’ trademark bickering. As hinted above, there is even a scene where a returning character, who I think I’ll keep secret here for the sake of not spoiling a great moment, steps up to the plate with a heroic action sequence of his own and let me tell you, my audience loved every second of it.
“Ride or Die” is the purest definition you can find of an audience movie. Like the other films in the series, it’s not a good film per se if you cling tightly to a “traditional critical lens” — the plot is less a consistent story and more a series of underdeveloped ideas, there are a ton of new characters who are integral to the story but have very little screentime, and the film is littered with more than enough oddball moments to make an all-too serious person scratch the skin right off his, her or their head — but it is a good film in the sense that you can’t help but love the experience anyway.
The inventiveness, creativity and love of moviemaking bleed through in every quip, every gag and every action scene. When Mike has a panic attack and you can feel the heartbeats shaking your seat, that’s cinema. When Marcus salivates over hundreds of colorful jelly beans falling his way, sticks his tongue out, catches and spits out a black licorice one mid-action scene, that’s cinema. When the camera spins to Mike and back to his gun as he takes out bad guys and then tosses it over to Marcus while the frame stays locked onto the pistol, that’s cinema baby.
Naturally, aging is a common theme in a long-running action series of this caliber, in which the leads themselves are quite obviously getting too old for this shit, and “Ride or Die” is no exception. The film opens with notorious bachelor Mike finally tying the knot with someone he is willing to settle down with, which anyone familiar with Mike Lowrey knows, this itself is not something to take lightly. But during the reception, Marcus has a heart attack. Don’t worry, he’s fine. A little too fine. When he comes to, he hops out of bed, prances out of the room to the hospital rooftop and dances on the ledge with his ass cheeks hanging out, showing the world a smidge too much of what Marcus Burnett is made of. Mike is not immune to problems either. Blaming himself for the death of Capt. Howard, Mike now suffers panic attacks and at one point in the film, is warned of his blood pressure by an EMT.
Despite the severity of these ailments, you’d be surprised how little they come up as the film progresses. Marcus reports to duty with little to no mention of pain, medication or recovery, and continues to run, shoot and dodge bullets without the risk of triggering another heart attack. The medical crisis is all but a faded memory by the time you reach the middle of the film, and by the end of it, it’s almost like it never happened at all. Likewise, Mike’s episodes, which you half-expect to trigger a medical emergency of his own, has but a small impact on the overall narrative. Funny, apart from these crises and jokes about diets, I can’t think of a single time the clearly aging detectives talk about how old they are getting. There is zero sense of finality, that this could be Mike and Marcus’ last adventure, there is never the talk with Marcus’ wife pleading him to stop, and the word “retirement” never comes up, not even once. It seems they really are bad boys for life.
Honestly, I’m glad “Ride or Die” didn’t end with one of the heroes dying. A couple years ago, “Clerks III,” of which I thought of in this film’s early moments, ended with a mic-drop lesson on mortality. It didn’t help that when it came out, I was going through what I believed to be a health crisis of my own. My pulse was never not racing, I had chest pains, heartbeats thumping like a hammer to a cement wall; I even went to the emergency room a few times. In the end, the doctors couldn’t find evidence of heart problems and after some lifestyle changes, these ailments eventually went away. But because the events of “Clerks III” were a massive reminder that our time here on this rock can be much shorter than we believe, even though I gave it a positive review at the time, I haven’t been able to revisit it. And as similar events threatened to transpire in “Ride or Die,” I found my mind turning to other individuals in the audience who may or may not feel these scenes hitting too close to home. But thankfully, Mike and Marcus live to ride or die at least one more time. Oh, there is a lesson to learn on mortality in “Ride or Die”; it’s just that here, the lesson is in times of turmoil, even when the world seems like it has nothing left to give, not even air or life itself, that you can still fight, love and give your buddies hell, that you can still endure. Or it can simply mean you can still cheer, laugh and have a good time at the movies.
