Bad Boys II - The Fall of Rollins

Well, I admit I went to see the car chases, which I understood as being pretty over-the-top, and they were, in terms of ridiculous numbers of cars destroyed. The whole cars-falling-off-the-back-of-a-big-rig thing was a intriguing chase element, but the chases were still pretty poorly blocked. It's the same complaint I've got with most western action films, there's not enough flow to the sequences. In order to really communicate a sense of tension and demonstrate what the hero is doing in order to avoid the other cars and pursue his target. Simply showing a series of cars exploding intercut with shots of Will Smith looking all calm and determined while Martin Lawrence goes, "Ohmygaw! Ohymaw! What are you doin'?! You so crayzeeee!!!" doesn't do the trick. Although piles of exploding cars and great, each car has a story that needs to be told, namely location, trajectory and velocity. The action sequences played out more like a disaster movie than a carefully crafted action flick.

The only difference between the heroes and the villian was that the camera was more often pointed at the heroes. Martin and Will (well... Will mostly) commit more crimes in the pursuit of their cookie-cutter Cuban druglord villian than the villian himself commits, I'm pretty sure. They were operating in a totally consequence-free universe where the worst thing that happens is getting yelled at by the boss when one violates international treaties, endangers the cover of DEA operatives, recklessly causes untold amounts of innocent death and property damage, break and enter without a warrant and typically act like a psychopathic menace to society, as long as you stop the evil man from smuggling ecstacy. The clincher was the two driving a Hummer 2 through a shanty village in Cuba, demolishing dozens of homes, without even considering that there might be people inside. The whole end sequence was pretty much either an enormous ad for the H2 or a sly metaphor for rampant American egotism and the conveniently ignored suffering our consumer culture engenders, but I'm guessing the former.

Fortunately they didn't run out of gas before reaching Guantanamo Bay ("Look at how nicely all the prisoners are being treated! And their military tribunals are really fair and unbiased!") where there is a showdown in a minefield. What good a minefield where all the mines are easily seen does is beyond me, but it does make for a interesting dynamic. At gunpoint, the heroine is told to throw down her gun, at which points she says, I'm not even kidding, "Okay, I'll throw down my gun, righ onto that landmine!", which for some reason really insulted my intelligence. Fortunately, even though it's been clearly explained to the audience exactly what she is doing, the antagonist doesn't catch on and gets promptly exploded.

If a well-crafted action movie is like a taseful well-lit lingerie shot, Bad Boys 2 was like hardcore gangbang donkey scat porn. When you're so jaded on the other stuff and unable to appreciate subtlety and craft, you no longer go at your weiner with respect and consideration, but the it's more like when you're just too lazy and impatient to give it time, then find the nastiest ponro available and furiously pound at your junk until you reach an ultimately unsatisfying climax (or in this case, pound at your junk for 2 1/2 hours). It does the job, but it doesn't feel as good and you feel bad about it afterwards, plus then you snap out of it and realize you're looking at donkey porn, pervert.