This Shit Just got Real
Bad Boys and Bad Boys II
It's impressive how both of these movies--a series, no less--can show the difference between old-school action movies and the current school of action filmmaking. Bad Boys was powered by the ridiculously awesome Beverly Hills Cop/Top Gun tag-team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, with former music video director Michael Bay directing his first feature film, and more or less represents the technical height of traditional action moviemaking--squib effects, actual explosions, minimal CGI, and less reliance on set-piece action make for a solid action flick that just happens to also be really, really funny.
On the other hand, Bad Boys II shows some of the worst side of the modern action movie--excessive slow-motion, cribbed-from-John Woo action scenes involving spinning around whilst dual-wielding handguns, the camera following CGI bullets to their targets, and CGI replacing squib effects and actual cars flying at actual stuntmen.
Yes, it's safer to make a movie like this, but it's also less impressive. Raiders of the Lost Ark had an actual stuntman slide under a truck hanging on to a whip, and then get dragged by it for a little while as he climbed up. The fact that somebody actually did that says more for the production crew than the dozen CGI artists who put together the (still awesome) highway chase in Bad Boys II where Will Smith and Martin Lawrence manage to demolish "22 cars... and a boat."
The gunfight-to-car-chase scene at the end of Bad Boys is very simple--there's no diving to the side with a pistol in each hand, there's minimal slow motion, and the lone one-liner in the entire scene is well-placed and very, very badass (YOU FORGOT YOUR BOARDING PASS!). Even the final "chase," which is nothing more than a drag race, is filmed in such a way that you're pulled into it, and when Detectives Burnett (Lawrence) and Lowrey (Smith) make it out okay and "win," it's a perfect cause for chest-thumping, fist-pumping celebration.
With the action spoken for on both counts, let's talk villains. The first movie has Tcheky Karyo, who plays all manner of evil and non-evil Frenchmen in movies, but he's best when he's bad. Here, he's smooth, but he's also capable of incredibly savagery, making him feel very unpredictable despite how well-thought-out his drug scheme is. The sequel has relative-unknown-in-the-US Jordi Molla as yet another drug kingpin, only this time the stakes are higher, etc. etc. because that's always how it is in the sequel. The strange thing about Molla's character is that no matter how ruthless he is with his enemies and even his own men, he's actually a pretty good dad, telling his adorable little daughter to cover her ears while he screams about how fucking depressing a painting of The Last Supper is (with his own face as Jesus', hilariously enough). It's also nice to see international MMA and judo champion (and former UFC champ) Oleg Taktarov as a Russian mob lieutenant.
Bad Boys II does everything bigger and badder than its predecessor, but not necessarily better--it's a great action movie, but its main problem is that it's just too goddamn long. I can understand Troy clocking in at just shy of three hours, as it's a "historical" epic, but Bad Boys II is a cops-and-robbers action-comedy--those usually don't go over two hours, ever. Even the recent Rambo felt kind of short, and that was about an hour and a half long, the standard length for a live-action movie.
In a way, it feels unfair to constantly point out how much better Bad Boys is than its sequel, but honestly I like the both of them so much that the difference between the two in my eyes is negligible. They remain fun, very well-done action movies that mix in well-written humor and fantastic chemistry between a great cast of actors, including Joe Pantoliano as the hilariously overstressed NARC captain, CSI reg Marg Helgenberger as an IA cop in the first movie, Tea Leoni in the first, and Gabrielle Union in the sequel as Burnett's sister/Lowrey's love interest.
I won't be too terribly disappointed to see a third movie in the series, but honestly, Will Smith has moved on to bigger and better things while Lawrence has kind of faded from everybody's good graces by only doing typical comedies and not really doing anything else, but hey, whatever pays his bills is good in my book.
次回: Batman Begins and Beauty and the Beast. This'll be nice.
It's impressive how both of these movies--a series, no less--can show the difference between old-school action movies and the current school of action filmmaking. Bad Boys was powered by the ridiculously awesome Beverly Hills Cop/Top Gun tag-team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, with former music video director Michael Bay directing his first feature film, and more or less represents the technical height of traditional action moviemaking--squib effects, actual explosions, minimal CGI, and less reliance on set-piece action make for a solid action flick that just happens to also be really, really funny.
On the other hand, Bad Boys II shows some of the worst side of the modern action movie--excessive slow-motion, cribbed-from-John Woo action scenes involving spinning around whilst dual-wielding handguns, the camera following CGI bullets to their targets, and CGI replacing squib effects and actual cars flying at actual stuntmen.
Yes, it's safer to make a movie like this, but it's also less impressive. Raiders of the Lost Ark had an actual stuntman slide under a truck hanging on to a whip, and then get dragged by it for a little while as he climbed up. The fact that somebody actually did that says more for the production crew than the dozen CGI artists who put together the (still awesome) highway chase in Bad Boys II where Will Smith and Martin Lawrence manage to demolish "22 cars... and a boat."
The gunfight-to-car-chase scene at the end of Bad Boys is very simple--there's no diving to the side with a pistol in each hand, there's minimal slow motion, and the lone one-liner in the entire scene is well-placed and very, very badass (YOU FORGOT YOUR BOARDING PASS!). Even the final "chase," which is nothing more than a drag race, is filmed in such a way that you're pulled into it, and when Detectives Burnett (Lawrence) and Lowrey (Smith) make it out okay and "win," it's a perfect cause for chest-thumping, fist-pumping celebration.
With the action spoken for on both counts, let's talk villains. The first movie has Tcheky Karyo, who plays all manner of evil and non-evil Frenchmen in movies, but he's best when he's bad. Here, he's smooth, but he's also capable of incredibly savagery, making him feel very unpredictable despite how well-thought-out his drug scheme is. The sequel has relative-unknown-in-the-US Jordi Molla as yet another drug kingpin, only this time the stakes are higher, etc. etc. because that's always how it is in the sequel. The strange thing about Molla's character is that no matter how ruthless he is with his enemies and even his own men, he's actually a pretty good dad, telling his adorable little daughter to cover her ears while he screams about how fucking depressing a painting of The Last Supper is (with his own face as Jesus', hilariously enough). It's also nice to see international MMA and judo champion (and former UFC champ) Oleg Taktarov as a Russian mob lieutenant.
Bad Boys II does everything bigger and badder than its predecessor, but not necessarily better--it's a great action movie, but its main problem is that it's just too goddamn long. I can understand Troy clocking in at just shy of three hours, as it's a "historical" epic, but Bad Boys II is a cops-and-robbers action-comedy--those usually don't go over two hours, ever. Even the recent Rambo felt kind of short, and that was about an hour and a half long, the standard length for a live-action movie.
In a way, it feels unfair to constantly point out how much better Bad Boys is than its sequel, but honestly I like the both of them so much that the difference between the two in my eyes is negligible. They remain fun, very well-done action movies that mix in well-written humor and fantastic chemistry between a great cast of actors, including Joe Pantoliano as the hilariously overstressed NARC captain, CSI reg Marg Helgenberger as an IA cop in the first movie, Tea Leoni in the first, and Gabrielle Union in the sequel as Burnett's sister/Lowrey's love interest.
I won't be too terribly disappointed to see a third movie in the series, but honestly, Will Smith has moved on to bigger and better things while Lawrence has kind of faded from everybody's good graces by only doing typical comedies and not really doing anything else, but hey, whatever pays his bills is good in my book.
次回: Batman Begins and Beauty and the Beast. This'll be nice.