Bad Boys for Life

Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah pick the series up seventeen years after the second film and make that gap the subject. Mike being shot is not an action opener but what pushes Marcus into swearing off the job, so for much of the first half the two men run on separate tracks and Mike is handed a young unit called AMMO. Anyone waiting for two men yelling at each other inside a car waits a while. The third act drops the cartel plot the opening built and rests on a family tie written into Mike’s past for this film alone. The production explains the tone. The directors say their first cut ran two hours and twenty six minutes, that they held eight or nine test screenings, and that the first version came out too dark for a Bad Boys picture, so they added fun back. The post credits scene was shot in reshoots after that first cut screened. Most of the Miami you see was Atlanta in winter, dressed to pass for summer. Worth it if you accept that ageing, fatherhood and retirement take as much room as the chases. Not for someone starting cold, since half the jokes lean on a familiarity built in 1995 and 2003.