Susan Granger’s review of “Bad Boys II” (Columbia Pictures)
This action-packed sequel to the 1995 movie starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence resonates with deafening gun battles, careening car chases, and graphic carnage for 2 1/2 hours. Smith and Lawrence play squabbling buddy cops Mike Lowry and Marcus Burnett. It’s eight years after their first escapade in Miami and, unbeknownst to Burnett, Lowry is dating his kid sister, Syd (Gabrielle Union), who works undercover for the DEA in New York. All three are on the tail of a ruthless trafficker in Ecstasy pills named Johnny Tapia (Jordi Molla), who smuggles drugs and money from Cuba to Miami and back in coffins. While the quest is to capture Tapia, the focus on the fireballs, explosions and banter – in that order. And since four writers (Ron Shelton, Jerry Stahl, Marianne Wibberly, Cormac Wibberly) are given screen credit, you’d think they wouldn’t have to repeat jokes twice. Perhaps director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer just didn’t listen since they seem to have paid far more attention to the systematic wrecking of vehicles: 22 cars and a boat are demolished in the movie’s first half-hour alone. To add to the gruesome gore, slow-motion photography follows bullets as they penetrate necks and shatter skulls, severed limbs drip blood on a dining-room table, and a decapitated head off an embalmed corpse bounces down the highway. That’s visceral. That’s nasty. On the other hand, one amusing moment does occur when Mike and Marcus team up to terrify a young man who has come to take Marcus’s daughter on a first date. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bad Boys II” is an interminably bloated, brutal 2. A contemptible example of vile, relentless overkill, it’s rated R for strong violence, offensive language, sexuality and drug content.
