Review by John P. Harvey.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die upholds a tradition of creative cops Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) for getting into the deadliest strife, beginning with a near-fatal heart attack for Marcus (following which the junk foods held responsible become a source of family tension before more-immediate threats to life intervene).
You needn’t have seen previous entries in the Bad Boys series to quickly catch on to the essentials in Bad Boys: Ride or Die: Mike Lowrey and Marcus and their respective spouses, Kelly (Vanessa Hudgens) and Theresa (Tasha Smith, replacing Theresa Randle), along with Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano), who continues to protect them all despite being recently deceased.
During his own heart attack, Marcus learns that trouble is brewing: the Cartel has him and Mike marked for death. And so it proves: the Cartel sends all its resources to put Mike and Marcus in the ground, and along with them their key witness to the identity of the Cartel boss whom Marcus and Mike are really after. But, once they are comprehensively framed for a terrible crime occurring in the course of transferring their witness, they have everybody after them.
The plot works very well both in providing the Bad Boys’ opponents’ motivations and in offering sudden reversals of fortune. Mike and Marcus are always likeable, and we come to understand the chief half-dozen characters well, but most of them are ready to surprise us.
Riddled with ballistic action, Bad Boys: Ride or Die nonetheless primarily embodies comedy from start to finish, with Marcus’s desperation for his now-forbidden junk foods even interfering during desperate moments and the banter between the two cops revealing both their underlying values — not always in accord — and their key differences: Marcus’s sensitivity, and Mike’s imperviousness, to insult.
Tremendous fun. Don’t miss it.