Arriving in theaters nearly three decades after Will Smith and Martin Lawrence proved to be a hilariously likable duo in the original “Bad Boys” and four years after the entertaining, midlife-crisis threequel, the bombastic and cartoonishly over-the-top “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is one loud misfire.
It’s like we’re watching the Big Book of Action Movie Clichés come to life, with so many tropes and overly familiar characters and plot developments crammed into the mix that we half-expect Smith and Lawrence to stop in the middle of the shootout sequence in the obligatory Abandoned Theme Park to look straight into the camera and wink at us.
No such luck. Smith and Lawrence are seasoned pros who still have an easy, best-friend chemistry, and the directors Adil & Bilal deliver sparkling visuals of the sparkling Miami locale, but the screenplay for “Ride or Die” is a howler that awkwardly careens from sitcom-level banter to extended, blood-spattered mayhem to cheap melodrama.
“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” kicks off with Smith’s Mike Lowrey and Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett roaring through the streets of Miami (with an amusing detour at a convenience store) to Mike’s wedding to Melanie Liburd’s Christine, a physical therapist who gives a speech about how she fell for Mike even before she knew he was loaded. (Yes, Mike’s a detective lieutenant, but he comes from a wealthy family.)
Marcus suffers a serious health episode at the reception, and he nearly dies — but just when it seems as if we’re going to lose him (which of course is not going to happen because then the movie would be “Bad Boy” singular), Marcus has a between-worlds meetup with the dead Capt. Howard (Joe Pantoliano), who actually tells him, “It’s not your time.” (The clichés continue later in the story, when Capt. Howard appears in a video and says, you guessed it: If you’re watching this, I’m probably dead.)
Marcus rejoins the land of the living with a newfound spirituality, convinced he and Mike are soulmates, though the whole Zen thing seems to come and go from scene to scene. In a storyline so tired it needs to take a long nap, the beloved Capt. Howard is posthumously framed for being in cahoots with a powerful drug cartel, and the evidence is pretty damning — but Mike and Marcus vow to clear Howard’s name and take down the ex-Army Ranger-turned-cartel-leader named Banker (a snarling and very well-tanned Eric Dane) who is behind the frame-up.
The only one who can ID Banker is Mike’s son Armando (Jacob Scipio), who as you might recall from “Bad Boys for Life” is a drug-dealing assassin who gunned down Capt. Howard and is in a maximum-security prison. In a sequence that combines (aka rips off) “Con Air” and “The Fugitive,” Mike and Marcus and Armando find themselves on the run, with all three of them wanted by the authorities, not to mention every hard-core thug in Miami, thanks to the $5 million bounty placed on their heads, and I guess the price of bounties has gone up since there was a $2 million prize offered up to anyone who could kill John Wick back in the day.
In between some fast-paced shoot-outs, including a truly clever sequence viewed mostly through the lenses of Ring cameras, and another scene in which it feels like we’re in a first-person video game (we can see the gun at the bottom of the frame), “Ride or Die” crams in a number of new characters. Rhea Seehorn from “Better Call Saul” is U.S. Marshal Judy Howard, who is in charge of bringing in Marcus, Mike and Armando, and get this: Judy has extra incentive, because she just happens to be the daughter of Capt. Howard, who was killed by Armando! Ioan Gruffudd appears as a district attorney with eyes on the mayor’s office, while the usually terrific Tiffany Haddish has a terribly unfunny cameo as a character who makes no sense.
Even as Marcus has seemingly miraculously recovered from nearly dying just a few weeks ago, Mike experiences an existential crisis and suffers anxiety attacks. Why? It’s never quite clear. In the meantime, “Ride or Die” asks us to buy into a possible redemption storyline for Armando, which is a tough sell, what with him being a drug-dealing, stone-cold killer and all. By that point, either you’ve placed your sense of logic in a nice little box at the door and you’re in this for the sheer dumb entertainment value, or you’re lamenting the fact that Mike and Marcus are stuck in this convoluted mess.
