![[box cover]](../../reviewimgs/b/badboys2.jpg)
Bad Boys II
Folks who actually bothered to count how many times the word "fuck" is uttered in Brian De Palma's 1982 pulp classic Scarface very soon anointed it the cinematic record-holder for potty-mouthed backtalk. Obsessive-compulsive DVD watchers, and various other types of shut-ins, are likewise invited to determine how often gunshots are heard in Michael Bay's Bad Boys II (2003) — odds are, it too has earned a place in Hollywood's rogues' gallery. In the follow-up to 1995's Bad Boys, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith return as Miami narco detectives Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey, who this time around are on the hunt for a massive shipment of ecstasy expected to arrive over water from Amsterdam. However, just when Mike thinks he's got a snitch with foolproof intel, it turns out that Marcus's sister Sydney (Gabrielle Union) is somehow mixed up with the drug-runners. Before long it's clear that her "desk job" with the DEA is just a cover for some serious undercover operations, and she's not willing to clue in the Miami PD because of their inside leaks. But what Marcus doesn't know is that Mike and Sydney recently got the hookup and are now dating — information Mike would rather not get back to his volatile partner. Both the DEA and the boys' Tactical Narcotics Team then target their chief suspect Alexei (Peter Stormare) separately, leading Mike and Marcus to discover the grisly nature of the smuggling operation, while Sydney's cover could possibly be blown at any moment. As one of Sony's big-budget summer tentpoles, it should come as no surprise that Bad Boys II is about as subtle as an overweight drunk at a garden party — it's a big, loud, dumb, completely shameless display of excess. It also didn't quite justify its $130 million budget, grossing $138 million domestically, leaving overseas markets and home video to get the ledger well into the black. But despite its overlong running-time (2 hrs., 27 min.), for the most part it's not such an ass-numbing spin at home. Cinema-'splosion fetishist Bay won't be adapting any Henry James novels for Helena Bonham Carter anytime soon — at least, not when he's trying to out-do himself with even more elaborate car-chases. BB2 sports three fairly impressive ones: A high-speed pursuit on a Miami causeway that sends cars literally spinning like oversized toys across the pavement, a pursuit of a morgue van that leaves cadavers lying on the street, and a final dash through a Cuban shantytown in a nearly indestructible Hummer H2. In a era when car-chases have become so routine that they're flat-out boring, Bay delivers three in one movie that are both exciting and inventive (albeit in part from the sheer excess of it all). That's one reason why BB2 is nearly an hour longer than it has any right to be — the second reason is simply the rapport between Lawrence and Smith. Any studio suit could have cut some of their funnier bits for the deleted scenes menu on the DVD, but Bay allows them to free-form, and he gets some laughs for it, particularly in a scene when the two are caught on a department store camera talking in double entendre about Marcus's unexpected impotence, and in a hilarious bit when the two shake down a 15-year old kid hoping to take Marcus's daughter out on a date. The comedy or the car chases would have been enough — throw it all in, and Bad Boys II is perfectly fine entertainment, if perhaps too much of too many good things. Columbia TriStar's two-disc DVD release features a solid anamorphic transfer (2.35:1) and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio on Disc One, as well as a gallery of trailers for this and other CTHE titles. Disc Two features seven deleted scenes, featurettes on the "Stunts" (9 min.) and "Visual Effects" (18 min.), a music video by Jay Z, "Sequence Breakdowns" on six action scenes, and no less than 19 "Production Diaries" featurettes. Dual-DVD slimline keep-case with paperboard slipcover.
—JJB
