Bad Boys 2 - 2003 Action Comedy Film Sequel

Michael Bay Returns to Direct with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence

Sep 13, 2009

Lowrey and Burnett return as Miami's finest narcotic officers, this time trying to stop the flow of ecstacy into Miami from local drug kingpin Johnny Tapia

Narcotics Detectives Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey return, this time on the trail of the flow of ecstasy into Miami. They are pitted against a criminal that has been pursued before and always manages to escape prosecution. When the case against him fails, he sues the city for millions making the police reluctant to go after him again.

Set eight years after Bad Boys, Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey (Martin Lawrence and Will Smith reprising their roles from the first film) are on hand to play the bickering detectives. Also returning from Bad Boys is Joe Pantoliano as the pair’s long suffering superior officer, Captain C. Howard. This time the Miami Police Department are after drug trafficker and neurotic Cuban kingpin named Hector Juan Carlos Tapia (Jordi Molla) who calls himself Johnny Tapia.

During the film it is revealed that Burnett has a sister named Syd (Gabrielle Union) who Mike met in New York and has since been secretly dating. She is also an undercover DEA posing as a money launderer in order to infiltrate the local Russian mafia who run a series of Miami nightclubs.

Burnett is also planning on ending his partnership with Lowrey. His decision has been coming for months but the final straw comes during a raid on drug trafficking members of the KKK when Burnett is shot through the buttocks by Lowery (even though in so doing he saved Burnett’s life by hitting a criminal in the neck).

As before, Burnett and Lowery bicker through the rest of the film and the tensions between them increase after Burnett shares his views on the types of men his sister tends to date (before he knows about Lowrey and Syd). He is angry to discover that Syd and Lowrey are an item.

Return to the Familiar

Bad Boys offered the audience a different slant on a buddy movie because two very different characters had to assume the roles of the other. Bad Boys 2 returns to the more traditional structure of the mismatched partners arguing their way through the film as they attempt to solve a crime.

Michael Bay returns to direct with his usual flare for explosions and action sequences. He even cameos as the driver of a car Lowrey and Burnett think about commandeering before choosing a better one being driven by Dan Marino.

Smith and Lawrence are obviously comfortable in their roles and apparently had so much fun making the film that they expressed interest in making a third. (Bad Boys 3 has since received a green light). Unfortunately, the film does fall into the ‘buddy movie’ trap by retreading the familiar ground of mismatched cops working together. Bad Boys was something different because it messed with the normal structure of a cop buddy movie.

There is nothing new about Bad Boys 2, however, there are those who consider it to be a superior sequel. The Lethal Weapon franchise basically set the bar by which all other cop buddy films would be measures, and because there were 4 Lethal Weapon films, it was always going to difficult to do something different.

Essentially Bad Boys 2 is a straight up action film that sees almost everything blow up in spectacular and completely over-the-top explosion. But then as this is a Michael Bay film that is to be expected.

Like is predecessor Bad Boys 2 is really enjoyed on a big screen television with a large bag of popcorn after the audience checks their brain at the door.

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