Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)

Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)

 

5/10

Starring          

Will Smith

Martin Lawrence

 

Directed by Adil & Bilall

 

I know Will Smith is on a redemption run, so this movie is a good start on that run. It is not as bad as you will expect it. It is also not as great or cool as I thought it will be. My problem is movies of now lack the grit of the times when the first Bad Boys was done.

Now everything must have some computer genius moving accounts, hacking and cryptic messages and bad guys who seem to have too much connection into things, that just is so unrealistic.

You can send a cryptic message to people, so instead of just sending them the message directly, what you do is this. You send them a message, that points them to someone. The someone then hid a link to another message in a flashing screen, which can only be seen if you record the screen and go through it frame by frame. How did they discover this link? Well, an officer without any prompt from anyone decided to do the frame by frame look at a flashing screen, like… what?

How did she know to do that?

The lazy writing in this movie is so apparent it is annoying. The movie’s plot makes no sense at all and that in itself is even more annoying. I watched it to the end, thinking there will be a reason, why the bad guys, who have gotten away with killing the captain, will decide to bring up the matter again after many years. But I guess the writers are so lazy, they just could not find a better way to get the two actors angry.

All that said, I enjoyed the action, and the references to the old movies, and I did enjoy some of the comedic laughs I got seeing this movie, but the movie is not leaving behind a lasting impression. Like the other two before this, it is easily forgettable. The first Bad Boys movie leaves an everlasting imprint, the others after it do not.

This movie is about Captain Howard, who as we know is dead. The whole Bad Boys franchise (other than the first movie) is so forgettable, I was trying hard to remember this. Now, in present time, the two buddy cops Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) are at a wedding when Marcus had a heart attack and almost died.

His survival meant he looked at life differently and then, Captain Howard is implicated in a crime. His reputation is at stake because some millions have been found in his account, dating back to years, showing he is in bed with the cartel.

Now, I am not trying to ruin this, but even this setup was useless. You see, you can back date payments and forge documents to make it look like you have been paying money for some period, but this is traceable. Everything leaves a time stamp, so if anyone does just a tiny bit of forensic check, they will see this is fake. Hollywood writers must think everyone is dumb and knows nothing about how computers work.

Mike and Marcus are upset and want to clear their captain’s name, but they were not upset enough, says the writers. So, the captain sent them a cryptic message that points them to someone, who gets killed when he was trying to point them to the flashing screen, then they get shot at and almost get killed trying to catch the bad guys.

The movie, in a succinct way, is about these two trying to clear their captain's name and identify the corrupt cops in their station.

As far as lazy writing goes, this movie is full of it, and it is so forgettable a movie.