Viking Night: Bad Boys
By Bruce Hall
May 4, 2017
“It’s just a book, Bruce. And books are entertainment. They don’t have to...what was it you said...make sense?”
No. Nobody has ever said that in the history of books, ever. I think the perception exists because movies are easier to watch than books are to read, leading people to subconsciously assume that one is less artistically valid than the other. That is also stupid, but taken to less of an extreme, it’s almost sensible. Not every film (or every book, for that matter) is meant to be taken seriously; certainly not entirely so. But what’s the point of a story that couldn’t be bothered to make any sense to anyone in any way?I’ll never understand it, but I will gladly let Michael Bay explain it with his very first feature film:
Bad Boys!
The first thing that needs to be said about Bad Boys is that on paper, it looks like the worst thing ever made. In fact, Bay himself famously called the original screenplay (reportedly written for Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz) a “piece of shit”. And that was before it was rewritten. AFTER it got punched up, the story went a little something like this:
Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) are Miami-Dade police officers. They are lifelong friends, even though they don’t seem to know much about one another, and we’ll find out later that Burnett has never seen the inside of his partner’s home. Mike also happens to be independently wealthy, for no reason other than it allows him and Marcus to do their jobs in style. There’s no real narrative reason for Mike to drive a Porsche 911, or to dress like he’s just come down from a luxury box at Madison Square Garden.
But it sure does look cool, doesn’t it? Mike’s partner Marcus has a more grounded personality type. This means he is constantly pining after things his job will never let him have, and he dresses the way MC Hammer would look if he joined NWA. If you’re thinking this sounds like a half-baked update of Miami Vice, allow me to point out that “Burnett” was also Don Johnson’s undercover name on that very show. So...yes, Bad Boys is fiercely derivative - but please don’t bother worrying about it just yet. I’m going to go on about it even more in this next paragraph.
Marcus and Mike report to their boss, Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano). Howard is the guy who is always aggressively yelling things like “there’s no sign of forced entry” and “the press will have a field day with this”. That’s because every time Mike and Marcus come back to the office, they discover that their wanton disregard for police regulations is giving the Captain fits. In fact if they’re not careful, they’re going to find themselves busted back down to beat cops! Shenanigans!
You might think this would keep them from getting any of the plum cop assignments, but you’d be wrong. Yes, they’re a pair of loose cannons. But it’s their recklessness that makes them the best, you see! So when a daring heist puts their jobs at risk for real, they are put to the test. But so is Michael Bay. Bad Boys was a dumpster fire waiting to happen. To save it, Michael Bay pulls off a cinematic sleight of hand so ingenious and bold that I find myself almost blind with reverence.
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