Bad Boys (4 Stars)

Will Smith is one of a small number of actors that I avoid. There's something about his street level talk that gets on my nerves. However, I recently sat down and thought to myself that he was good in "Suicide Squad". And he was fantastic as the Devil in "A New York Winter's Tale". He was pretty good in "Collateral Beauty" as well. Oh yes, I also liked the three "Men in Black" films. That's six films. So what films have I seen him in that I didn't like? There's "Independence Day", which is a pretty cruddy film overall. And then there's... nothing!

That means I've liked him in six films and disliked him in one, yet I say I don't like him and routinely avoid his films? There's something wrong with me. If I were sitting opposite him I'd have to apologise to his face.

So I watched "Bad Boys" this evening, and surprise surprise... I liked it a lot. Will Smith does a remarkable job in his portrayal of the unorthodox Miami policeman Mike Lowrey.

Mike Lowrey is unorthodox because he's rich. He's inherited a large sum of money from his parents, which we see in his lifestyle when he's off duty. He has a luxurious apartment and he drives a Porsche. He doesn't need to work, but he says that all his life he's wanted to be a cop. Fair play to him. He also enjoys a wild life as a single, having a string of girlfriends. This leads to some amusing repartee with his partner, Marcus Burnett. Marcus is a happily married man with three children, except for one gap in his happiness: his marriage has become sexless. He warns Mike against marriage, telling him that it's normal that after you marry a hot woman the sex stops. My own experience confirms that. When you're single you have sex for fun. When you're married you have sex to have children. When you no longer want children, what's the point of sex? It doesn't have to be that way, but it happens a lot, and usually it's the women who lose interest in sex.

But I'm getting off the subject. Thieves break into the Miami police station and steal over $100 million worth of heroin from the police evidence room. Internal Affairs claims (quite rightly) that the thieves must have had help on the inside, and if the heroin isn't returned within a week the police station will be closed down. So Mike and Marcus go to work, and they have to work fast.

The rest of the film is characterised by fast action and occasional comic moments. I'll just point out one small subplot that runs through the film. Mike asks his ex-girlfriend, a call girl called Maxine, to watch out for any suspicious activity in the underworld. Together with another call girl, her best friend Julie, they visit the ex-policeman Eddie Dominguez for business. Eddie's associates burst in and execute him for throwing his money around. Maxine is shot, but Julie escapes. Julie tells the police she will only speak to Mike Lowrey, who she's never met, because Maxine has highly praised him as a policeman she can trust. Mike is out on a job, so Marcus impersonates him. He shelters Julie in Mike's apartment, and Mike has to pretend to be Marcus when he returns, moving in with Marcus' family.

This is a very good buddy cop film, and the only weakness is in the character development. The criminals especially are too anonymous. I would have liked to know more about them, rather than seeing them as random bad guys running around with guns.

I shan't be avoiding Will Smith's films in future. That's a promise.

Success Rate:  + 5.4

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