‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ Has Some Lies to Clear Up

June 4, 2024

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, what you gonna ride? What you gonna ride, when you ride or die? (CREDIT: Frank Masi/Columbia Pictures)

Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Jacob Scipio, Melanie Liburd, Tasha Smith, Rhea Seehorn, Joe Pantoliano, Tiffany Haddish, John Salley, DJ Khaled, Dennis Greene, Quinn Hemphill

Directors: Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah

Running Time: 115 Minutes

Rating: R for Heavy Artillery and the Dirty Cops That Fire Them

Release Date: June 7, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Don’t speak ill of the dead, or a couple of flashy Miami police detectives might just start investigating your ass. When the late Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano) is posthumously accused of collaborating with a drug cartel, Detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) set out to clear their mentor’s good name. It seems stunningly obvious that Howard is innocent, but the cartel’s tendrils of influence are inescapable, and their arsenal is bottomless. Plus, it doesn’t help that the best course of action involves transferring Mike’s incarcerated son Armando (Jacob Scipio) so that he can ID the real perp. Adding to the hurricane is the fact that Captain Howard’s US Marshal daughter Judy (Rhea Seehorn) has her own plan to clear her dad’s name that doesn’t involve trusting Mike or Marcus.

What Made an Impression?: They’re Really Getting Too Old For This S-: The last Bad Boys flick came out four years ago, and it was already the sort of legacy action sequel that was majorly about how its main characters are aging out of their high-octane lifestyles. Ride or Die ramps that angle up right from the get-go, with Marcus suffering a widow maker heart attack after indulging in a few too many Skittles and gas station hot dogs. Meanwhile, Mike is having a series of inexplicable panic attacks. As it plays out, though, this is really more about the odd couple dynamic, as Lawrence was never exactly the action star specimen that Smith has been for most of his career. While this thread could have been more meditative, I appreciate that it’s at least occasionally psychedelic, with Marcus going on a rather visually inventive spiritual journey following his heart attack. The rest of the movie is typical gunfire-filled mayhem, but at least there’s room for the leads to occasionally riff about mystical mumbo-jumbo.
Fancy Bad Boys: Sometimes I just want to spotlight one weird specific moment from a movie without covering too many of the most important details. Ride or Die is pretty much a retread of Bad Boys for Life, after all (at least in terms of vibes, if not necessarily plot). But what For Life didn’t have is Mike and Marcus pretending to be Reba McEntire superfans to get themselves out of a pickle. If you’ve seen the trailer, you already know that they’re forced at gunpoint to sing their favorite song by the country superstar to prove their bona fides. And if that moment had you wondering if we get a Reba rendition of the Inner Circle song that serves as this franchise’s namesake, well, then I must say that you are thinking clearly. And that’s what I’m going to choose to focus on whenever I think about this movie.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is Recommended If You Like: Martin Lawrence being really silly, Will Smith being really annoyed, Rhea Seehorn being really serious

Grade: 3 out of 5 Posthumous Video Messages

‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’ Spotlights the Plight of an Afghani Ally Targeted by the Taliban

April 19, 2023

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

A key member of The Covenant (CREDIT: Christopher Raphael/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures
© 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dar Salim, Alexander Ludwig, Anthony Starr, Emily Beecham, Jonny Lee Miller

Director: Guy Ritchie

Running Time: 123 Minutes

Rating: R for Modern Warfare and Drunken Vitriol

Release Date: April 21, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant at first looks like a pretty typical 21st century war film, with lots of sweating and tumbling through mountainous desert terrain. It’s April 2018, and Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds himself squarely in the crosshairs of a resurgent Taliban, with nobody to protect him except his Afghani interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim). Then about halfway through, the film pivots to the tangled odyssey of John repaying the favor by attempting to secure American visas for Ahmed and his family. It’s a high-stakes rescue mission with no promises of safety or success, as the only way to track down an Afghan citizen on the run from the Taliban is by jumping right back into the cauldron.

What Made an Impression?: The Covenant kicked off by having the gall to give me terrible flashbacks to Guy Ritchie’s last release, Operation Fortune: Rose de Guerre, as I struggled to keep track of everybody’s names and motivations. I thought I was paying attention well enough, but combat is obviously high-pressure, and soldiers can frequently find themselves in situations where it’s too dangerous to say their names to each other, let alone anything at all. But then that midpoint reinvention came along, and it was absolutely critical, and profoundly welcome. Suddenly it became clear that this wouldn’t be just a straightforward depiction of modern warfare, but an opportunity to call attention to an urgently timely issue. Furthermore, Sgt. Kinley would now have plenty of chances to say his own name and Ahmed’s over and over again.

Where The Covenant delivers its central point most saliently is a montage of John driving himself into a Kafkaesque rage over the futility of America’s visa process. It maybe fast-tracks a bit too much the development of him being driven to ruin by booze, but it works to convey just how destructively frustrating this bureaucracy is. The extraction scenes are pulse-pounding and cleanly edited, but the effect is stronger when the focus is on the conversations and negotiations. Thousands of real-life Afghans who worked alongside Americans are desperately waiting for their fortunes to turn as Ahmed’s did. If The Covenant can manage to throw a light on their plight, even just a little bit, then it will have been worth it.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is Recommended If You Like: Going beyond the headlines of the nightly news

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Visas

‘National Champions’ Presents Its Melodramatic Case for Student-Athlete Compensation

December 9, 2021

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

National Champions (CREDIT: Scott Garfield/Courtesy of STX Films)

Starring: Stephan James, J.K. Simmons, Alexander Ludwig, Lil Rel Howery, Tim Blake Nelson, Andrew Bachelor, Jeffrey Donovan, David Koechner, Kristin Chenoweth, Timothy Olyphant, Uzo Aduba

Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: R for Big Boy Executive Language

Release Date: December 10, 2021 (Theaters)

National Champions is certainly timely, as the subject of student-athlete compensation has made its way up to the Supreme Court, and players are now permitted to financially benefit from their name, image, and likeness. But I don’t imagine that this conflict will play out in real life anywhere near as operatically it does in this movie. That’s not a criticism! I’m in the theater to be entertained, not to confirm that they get all the facts straight. And for the most part, I was thrilled, amused, and riveted.

Stephan James is at the center of it all as star quarterback LeMarcus James. James (the actor) played Jesse Owens in his breakthrough role, so he’s building up a bit of a resume of athletes who take a historical stand. LeMarcus is a senior playing his last college game in the looming title bout who’s also the presumptive number one pick in the upcoming NFL draft. But he’s calling an audible, as he announces that he’s boycotting the game unless and until the NCAA agrees to recognize varsity athletes as employees and pay them accordingly. He’s got about three days to convince his teammates and his opponents to join him, while also ducking out of the way of his coach (J.K. Simmons), various college football administrators and executives, and the NCAA’s ruthless outside counsel representative (Uzo Aduba).

Director Ric Roman Waugh and screenwriter Adam Mervis (adapting his own play of the same name) have painted a massively cynical portrait of the state of college athletics. Some of their tsk-tsking is well-founded, but my god, is it breathtakingly overwrought. It kinda has to be, considering that pretty much every line of dialogue frames everyone’s decision in life-or-death stakes. This could be a formula for unbearable soul crushing, but thankfully the premise has to allow at least a hint of optimism to poke its way in throughout. That lightness helps us realize that the ridiculousness of all the melodrama is a plus, as laughing at the moral righteousness of this exploitative system is a healthy reaction.

One other noteworthy observation before I go: several real-life athletes and sportscasters appear as themselves, which would add some authenticity, but that’s undercut by the lack of real-life branding. The teams in the championship game are from fictional schools, and ESPN (or any other sports network for that matter) is never once mentioned. I’d argue that the fakeness is weirdly the right choice (though I imagine it actually wasn’t a choice at all); this isn’t the real world after all, but a slightly heightened version of it.

National Champions is Recommended If You Like: Over-the-top line deliveries, Sports movies without any sports, Kristen Chenoweth performances without any singing

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Salaries

‘Bad Boys for Life’ Finds the Heart That Was Always Lurking Beneath the Carnage

January 15, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

CREDIT: Kyle Kaplan/Sony Pictures

Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Charles Melton, Paola Núñez, Kate del Castillo, Jacob Scipio, Joe Pantoliano, Nicky Jam, Theresa Randle

Director: Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah

Running Time: 124 Minutes

Rating: R for Execution-Style Gunfire, A Fiery Climax, and Motormouth Profanity

Release Date: January 17, 2020

Bad Boys II came out in July 2003, a month after 2 Fast 2 Furious. The former is perhaps the apex at which Michael Bay fully embraced his destiny as a director of baroque extremes. Its signature chase scene, in which cars pop out of other cars and massive vehicular destruction is ultimately essentially shrugged off, is perhaps the most sublimely over-the-top sequence ever committed to celluloid. In the years since, the Fast and Furious flicks have trended more and more towards such defying of physics and logic, while Bad Boys has remained dormant … until now. As Detectives Marcus Bennett and Mike Lowrey return (and Bay retreats to just producing, with Belgian duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah taking over directing duties), Bad Boys for Life in turn finds inspiration from the other signature element of the F&F franchise, embracing the heart and brotherhood at its core that was always waiting to be explored.

The pairing of Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in the first two Bad Boys leaned hard (dangerously hard) into their odd couple nature. Marcus (Lawrence) and Mike (Smith) are not only partners, but also lifelong friends, which is evident but also a little disheartening in terms of how much they constantly get on each others’ nerves. But Bad Boys for Life surprisingly, but wisely, embraces the genuine love between the two men. One running thread in the series that continues here is Marcus’ desperation to just retire and spend time with his family. That was previously played mostly for laughs, but now it is much more serious, as Mike survives a brush with death and Marcus becomes fully convinced that they have served long and well enough. But Mike has revenge on his mind, and he wants his partner to be right alongside him as always. Marcus initially refuses, and even though we know he is eventually going to come around, the moment when he stands his ground is killer, with both actors asked to reach new levels of investment and emotional gut-wrenching.

The other gratifying innovation on display is a new set of teammates to render Marcus and Mike much less of the uncontrollable cowboys they’ve always been. It may be fun to see them constantly give Captain Joe Pantoliano conniptions, but at a certain point, it’s a little too hard to accept that someone wouldn’t step in and put a firm stop to their antics. That check comes in the form of AMMO, a new division of Miami PD focused on surveillance and drones more so than going in guns blazing. It’s headed up by a former flame of Mike’s (Paola Núñez) and a trio of youngsters (Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Charles Melton) who all admire Mike while simultaneously laughing at him and saving his ass when he gets into trouble. These bad boys indeed are still riding together to the end, but there’s plenty of space to hop in alongside them.

Bad Boys for Life is Recommended If You Like: The previous Bad Boys but wish they had more heart, the Fast & Furious series

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Rides Together