“Bad Boys for Life” balances comedy with seriousness

Bad+Boys+for+Life+premiered+on+January+17%2C+2020.

Alex Flores, Vimeo, Creative Commons

“Bad Boys for Life” premiered on January 17, 2020.

Sam Best, Staff Writer

Seventeen years after the initial film Bad Boys, the franchise returned with another hit movie for the franchise’s third movie, Bad Boys for Life.

The movie stars two action cops in Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. The duo has significantly aged since their last appearances in the movies, but their comedy did not die down.

The film returned to Miami, where the pair of actors still want to be bad-ass respected cops, but now they are at the point of their lives where they are also trying to be “good men,” as the show ironically points out. Surprisingly enough, this trying to balance the two sides of themselves works out and turns into another humorous motion picture. 

The movie captures the two cops who should be at the end of their careers by now, for Marcus Bennett (Martin Lawrence) is now a grandfather. Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) still wants to chase down criminals and do exciting stuff to feel young again. When Mike surprisingly almost gets killed by a villain, the raunchy pair have no choice but to put on their uniforms and go on one last ride together. 

The plot was well constructed, and it continued to keep a nice balance between action and comedy.

— Sam Best

This time around, they have another group who is trying to get in their way. The “Ammo Squad” is the Miami PD’s higher-ups who have all the latest technology and equipment used to track down the worst of Miami. The main villains in the movie are Isabel and Armando Artetas: a mother who is a drug lord’s widow and a son who she tasks to go and assassinate Lowrey. 

Later in the movie, Lowrey reveals to Mark that he thinks Armando might be his son. He knew Isabel before and fell in love with her in Mexico City. Later he found out how bad of a person she was and how deep she was in the cartel. He decided to remain loyal to the police force and drifted away from her. When Lowrey sees Isabal at a palace, he scolds her for concealing the truth to her son. The cartel gets into a shootout with ammo. Armando has a chance to kill his father, but he cannot force himself to do it. Later in the movie in the middle of the flames and a brawl, Armando ends up helping his dad save his best friend Marcus. The movie wraps up with Mike telling his son he will always be there for him even when he goes to jail.

For the third movie in a series that premiered seventeen years earlier, the plot was well constructed, and it continued to keep a nice balance between action and comedy. The plot kept the viewer entertained with a bunch of surprise twists and amazing video footage with mesmerizing special effects. The two cops are still a hysterical duo even though they have aged and are not what they used to be. They did their best to keep the comedy flowing even in the most serious of scenes. Bad Boys for Life did a great job of wrapping up a hilarious set of movies.