Bad Boys

Michael Bay’s 1995 debut gives two Miami narcotics detectives seventy two hours to recover heroin stolen from their own evidence room, and makes them trade identities to keep the only witness talking. The script was not written for them. George Gallo’s Bulletproof Hearts was developed with Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz in mind before it was sold to Columbia. The identity swap is a leftover from that version, with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence improvising on top of it. The reply during the convenience store hold up and the argument at sea were found on set, not written. Bay later put a number on the gap: the production got ten thousand dollars for a rewrite, so the rest was invented. In the same interview he said his fast cutting existed to hide cheap art direction and give the picture energy. That is why the action delivers speed rather than a readable map of who is standing where. Shooting had to finish by the end of August 1994 so both leads could return to their sitcoms. Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer produced. A good fit if you count it a virtue that the lines people quote, the convenience store reply included, were improvised. Not for viewers who need spatial clarity in a gunfight: the cutting does not aim for it.