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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nI\u2019m not going to go into a lot of depth about the story in \u201cBad Boys: Ride or Die.\u201d Miami detectives Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are back to have another cop adventure. They do some investigating, clash with superiors, run afoul of bad guys, the bad guys endanger their loved ones, and then there\u2019s a big showdown with the bad guys at the end. There\u2019s no suspense in predicting that the movie will stick to that formula. The real suspense comes from wondering what the action scenes will entail, what jokes will be cracked, and, this being a \u201cBad Boys\u201d movie, how ridiculous it will all be. With that in mind, I have some thoughts\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-Will Smith is back! The A-lister\u2019s career has gone through some major ups and downs the past few years, with the pinnacle of each coming at the same Oscars ceremony. He was unofficially suspended from the limelight for a while, but this movie marks his comeback. And I\u2019m glad to have him back, with his blockbuster presence as strong as ever, if not with a sharper edge. Fans are eager to find out if and how the film will address Smith\u2019s real-life bad boy behavior. I\u2019ll give you this tease: someone gets slapped in this movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-Martin Lawrence is back too. I don\u2019t have much to say for his star power, but I will praise his performance. Marcus suffers a heart attack early in the movie and spends much of his screentime spouting apparent nonsense about his experience in a coma. In the time since I saw this movie, I have encountered no fewer than two individuals on the New York City subway with similar tendencies. They made me appreciate Lawrence\u2019s cadences in this movie. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s research or just keen observation, but he\u2019s really got it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-The evil plan of bad guy McGrath (Eric Dane) involves framing Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano), Marcus and Mike\u2019s longtime superior who was killed in the last movie. The plan makes zero sense, since it draws attention and scrutiny to crimes that probably would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Howard himself has a sizeable presence in the movie, with everything from memorial photos and news footage to pre-recorded messages and appearances during near-death experiences. We know the characters miss him, but how can we miss him if he won\u2019t go away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-Howard warns Mike and Marcus that there\u2019s been a decades-long cartel mole in Miami. Realistically, how many characters could this be? Fellow team members played by Vanessa Hudgens and Alexander Ludwig are too young. Howard\u2019s daughter (Rhea Seehorn) is a U.S. Marshall that probably doesn\u2019t even live in Miami. I suppose it could be new captain Secada (Paola Nu\u00f1ez), but I can\u2019t help but notice that she\u2019s engaged to a smarmy politician (Ioan Gruffudd). Does the movie realize which of these two is the obvious suspect and who would count as subversive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-To get information on the mole, Mike and Marcus have to interview Mike\u2019s imprisoned son Armando (Jacob Scipio) from the last movie. Eventually the three have to work together to combat the bad guys. I was skeptical about bringing Armando back, thinking that the character might not be interesting enough to span multiple movies. But I had nothing to worry about, Scipio makes a good action hero, better than he did a villain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-But Armando\u2019s return has nothing on Reggie (Dennis McDonald), Marcus\u2019s notoriously-bullied, seemingly-unmotivated son-in-law. Turns out Mike isn\u2019t the only one with a family member with action chops. As I was leaving this movie, nobody was talking about Will Smith, everybody was talking about Reggie. And I\u2019ll say that Reggie is just what the movie needs to bump it up to a recommendation. I was on the fence about where I stood on the whole \u201cit\u2019s dumb, but it\u2019s supposed to be dumb\u201d attitude that these movies embrace. But with Reggie, \u201cBad Boys: Ride or Die\u201d has enough heart to cover the missing brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBad Boys: Ride or Die\u201d is rated R for strong violence, language throughout and some sexual references.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver I\u2019m not going to go into a lot of depth about the story in \u201cBad Boys: Ride or Die.\u201d Miami detectives Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":59420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2707],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59421,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59419\/revisions\/59421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}