‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ Review – Will Smith and Martin Lawrence Find Some Fresh Fun in Newest Ride

When the pandemic shuttered theaters in early 2020, Bad Boys for Life was a surprise box office hit and would wind up being the highest-grossing film of the year. Global crisis notwithstanding, the film followed many years after Michael Bay’s critically and financially underwhelming Bad Boys (1995) and the even more critically panned but far more financially successful Bad Boys II (2003). But Bad Boys for Life was more than just an unexpected box office darling. It was also well received by critics, becoming the first in the 25-year-old franchise to become “certified fresh.” A sequel was obvious.

Adil & Bilali return to helm Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which catches up with Detectives Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) barreling through the streets of Miami in Mike’s Porsche, on the way to his wedding. When they make a quick stop so Marcus can buy ginger ale for his upset tummy, the two find themselves in the middle of an armed robbery, which they quickly resolve with a healthy dose of bullets and shattered glass. Is it a Bad Boys movie without scattered showers of shot-out windows?

Armed with the reliable charisma of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, what follows are two hours of the type of explosive, silly fun the summer movie season was made for. Dizzying camerawork from cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert sometimes helps and sometimes hurts the action as he twirls and leaps from one style to another. One moment, we’re watching two people in a car and the next, we’ve jumped into a video game as first-person shooters, trying desperately to find our bearings. Experimentation can be fun, though, and what better place to do it than in a silly action movie where everyone just wants to have a good time?

Mike and Marcus make it to the wedding, though Marcus later collapses and spends weeks in the hospital. When he comes home from his near-death experience, he has a newfound lust for life. He believes he cannot die, which is either great or terrible timing when the longtime friends and partners find themselves the wrongly accused subjects of a manhunt.

A strange kind of alchemy is at play with the script penned by Chris Bremner and Will Beall. Dad-joke-level humor, thinly written supporting characters, and a convoluted plot are held together by homages to other, better action movies. The visual references to everything from The Fugitive to Black Panther are obvious and frequent. But Ride or Die manages to be an entertaining thrill ride, mostly because Smith and Lawrence are just so much fun to watch as they needle each other from one predictable jam to the next. 

It’s difficult to sustain so much action with an unoriginal plot, and admittedly, the story slows to a crawl more than once. But each time the movie is on the verge of losing the audience, the bad guys show up again, led by a generically menacing but effective Eric Dane (HBO’s Euphoria). Dane is former military officer McGrath, now spending his post-Army life working with the cartels and possibly someone inside Miami PD. To cover their tracks, McGrath and his team plant evidence to posthumously frame Captain Howard as a dirty cop. While trying to clear his name, Mike and Marcus subsequently find themselves accused of being his co-conspirators and must evade capture from the U.S. Marshals, the Miami police – which still has a corruption problem – and the real villains. While still trying to clear Howard’s name and now their own.

Vanessa Hudgens and Alexander Ludwig reprise their roles as Kelly and Dorn, along with Paola Núñez as Captain Rita Secada. Joe Pantoliano’s deceased Captain Howard joins in on the fun despite still being very much not alive. Knowing his days were numbered, Captain Howard managed to record a few scavenger hunt-style videos to lead Mike and Marcus to the real villains. New to the cast are Tasha Smith, who made headlines when she surprisingly replaced Teresa Randle as Marcus’s wife of 30 years, and Rhea Seehorn plays Captain Howard’s daughter and a U.S. Marshal, who happens to be chasing her father’s favorite bad boys.

But in this family affair, the next generation gets the opportunity to step up and prove themselves. Dennis Greene, who first played Marcus’s son Reggie in Bad Boys II, is a grown-up Marine with a family of his own and gets to show off his particular set of skills in a spectacularly heroic sequence. And Mike’s recently revealed son, Armando (Jacob Scipio), is offered the chance to redeem himself after his very violent criminal life landed him in prison. Armando is far more central to the story than Reggie, but there is something poetic as each of these odd father/son relationships unfold.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a good time. Adil & Bilali know what franchise fans want and they deliver it with neon lights, explosions, and a rollicking soundtrack which features the Black Eyed Peas, Flo Milli, Will Smith, and multiple remixes of the Bad Boys title track. 

Grade: B

Sony Pictures will release Bad Boys: Ride or Die only in theaters on June 7, 2024.

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Karen Peterson

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