FILM

Whatcha gonna do?

Twenty-five years have passed since detectives Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) first suited up for Captain Michael Bay in Bad Boys, and 17 years have passed since they joined him again for Bad Boys II.

Since the first time Bay assaulted our eyes and ears with his patented brand of cinematic garbage, I’ve grown to almost enjoy said garbage. I hated Bad Boys, but I sort of liked the outrageous Bad Boys II. Bay tends to amuse me now, unless he’s doing a Transformers movie, in which case I check out. I attribute my suddenly liking some Bay movies to brain decay due to aging, a lack of iron and a general loss of spirituality over the years.

So, I guess the bad news is that Bay passed on directing Bad Boys for Life, the third installment in the franchise. I would’ve liked to have seen an attempt by Bay to top the almost self-parodying craziness that was Bad Boys II, but, alas, he was making Netflix movies with Ryan Reynolds.

The good news is that the directing team of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah does a sufficient job of continuing the mayhem, easily topping Bay’s lame original and providing a chapter that is as good, and sometimes better, than chapter two.

Burnett is eying retirement, while Lowrey is dealing with the psychological and physical ramifications of aging (he’s dyeing his goatee, so it’s all good). A crazy witch lady gangster Isabel (Kate del Castillo) has escaped from prison and has put out a hit list for her son Armando (Jacob Scipio) to work his way through. Isabel has some vengeance in mind, the targets are former associates, and they have connections to Lowrey.

Lowrey himself is on that list, and he takes a couple of bullets early in the film. I’m not giving too much away here in telling you that Lowrey doesn’t die. There’s no movie if Lowrey dies. So, a brief healing time later, Lowrey and a very reluctant Burnett are back in action, wise cracking and shooting people in slow motion.

Some familiar faces return, including Theresa Randle as Burnett’s long suffering wife. She’s good in a subplot that has Burnett becoming a grandad while getting more house time in attempted retirement. House retirement doesn’t go well. Bad things happen with ceiling fan repair. Joe Pantoliano makes a welcomed return as Pepto-Bismol-swigging Captain Howard, a still capable riff on all of those screaming captains from Beverly Hills Cop movies.

All the mayhem comes to an appropriately visceral and bloody conclusion, replete with big plot twists and the Smith-Lawrence duo kicking ass. When the two are just allowed to riff and fly, it’s fun. There’s a big production going on around them, but it never overwhelms their combined star power. They are bloodier, nastier versions of Abbott and Costello.

As Bay learned with Bad Boys II, Smith and Lawrence are better in this sort of thing when they wink at the camera and everything is ridiculously over-the-top. The new directors know their way around an action scene, and their comic timing is strong, so there are equal levels of laughs and explosions in this installment. The movie isn’t the big joke that Bad Boys II was—Burnett’s electronics store sex problem confession remains the series highlight—but it’s unabashedly nuts. It also qualifies as a competent and promising reboot.

Now, please don’t take these words as incredibly high praise. I’m saying that this is relatively tasty cinematic junk food. I’m saying that it’s good enough that I’m OK with the idea that the next chapter won’t be nearly two decades away. (Bad Boys 4 is already in the works.) I’m saying that there seems to be a few more Bad Boys stories to tell, and the beat goes on without Bay. Ω

“Grimm only gave us three stars? Aim a little higher.”

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51917 A couple of British World War I soldiers stationed in France have themselves a harrowing time in 1917, a war action/drama from Director Sam Mendes that amounts to one of 2019’s greatest technological achievements in cinema. It’s also one of the past year’s best movies. Mendes, along with his special effects team, editing crew and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (an Oscar winner for Blade Runner 2049), designed the film to look like one continuous “real time” shot. They do a seamless job, to the point where you stop looking for the places where edits might be happening and you just take the whole thing in. The story never suffers in favor of the filmmaking stunt. Lance Corporals Schofield and Blake (George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) are seen napping at the beginning of the movie. Blake is ordered to wake up and report to command and takes Schofield along with him. The two pals figure they have some sort of nothing assignment coming their way involving food or mail delivery. Not long after, in a plot that owes a little to Saving Private Ryan, Schofield and Blake get their unusual assignment: go beyond a recently abandoned German front line and reach the next British battalion before they mistakenly advance into a trap set by the enemy. It’s up to them to save the lives of 1,600 soldiers, one of them being Blake’s older brother. The movie is set in motion and never really stops. Schofield and Blake venture out into a body-riddled, fly-infested battlefield with very little time to spare. Deakins’ camera follows them as if you were a third party along for the mission. This results in a completely immersive experience.

3Just Mercy Michael B. Jordan stars as civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, a real-life attorney who has dedicated his life to freeing wrongly convicted death row inmates. Destin Daniel Cretton’s film focuses primarily on the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a man sentenced to death for the murder of a girl, even though evidence showed him with friends and family at the time of the killing. What happened to McMillian is depicted competently in the movie, as are some other cases and Stevenson’s struggles to bring injustices into the light. Jordan and Foxx are very good, as are a supporting cast of Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson and O’Shea Jackson, Jr. The film is well done, but perhaps a little too routine for stretches. Still, it’s a showcase for fine acting, especially by Jordan and Foxx. It’ll also get you thinking on the downfalls of the death penalty, and the kinds of horrors men like McMillian went through.

4Little Women This is the umpteenth adaptation of the classic Louisa May Alcott novel, and it’s safe to say this one is in the running for best adaptation of the story—ever. Directed by rising directorial juggernaut Greta Gerwig (the magnificent, ultrafantastic Lady Bird)—who has a vision with her films that declares, “Hey, we aren’t screwing around here!”—her third feature is an across-the-board stunner. It’s also chock-full of tremendous performances, and it’s written and directed by Gerwig, whose vision makes this an admirable update of a precious work. The incredible Saoirse Ronan, who also starred in Lady Bird, headlines as Jo March, eldest sister of the March clan, which includes three others: Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). Ronan, not surprisingly, makes the intrepid character of Jo her own, a budding writer who is trying to get her ideas past a crusty editor (Tracy Letts, who had a damn fine 2019). Gerwig, in a departure from past adaptations, focuses more on the girls as adults, with flashbacks to their younger days. In doing this, she has chosen not to cast Amy with two different actresses. Pugh, who is well into her 20s, plays Amy at every stage, even falling through the ice as a pre-teen. I’d say that was an odd choice, but the other choice would be to have less screen time for Pugh, and I say a big no to that. Yes, she doesn’t look like she’s 12, but who cares? She’s a master in every scene. Timothée Chalamet steps into the role of Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, and there couldn’t have been a better choice for the role.

3Underwater Kristen Stewart goes into badass movie star mode in Underwater, a long delayed and surprisingly decent deep-sea horror/thriller from director William Eubank. While it stands to be the second big-budget box office disaster in a row for Stewart after Charlie’s Angels, it deserves a better fate. The movie is actually pretty good. The film doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or work any miracles. It’s successful in a very basic way in that it engages from beginning to end, with an occasional effective scare, a constant sense of dread and high-pressure tension. Stewart stars as Norah, an underwater engineer on a drilling rig in the middle of the Mariana Trench. We first see her brushing her teeth as the lights around her flicker, accompanied by some dull thuds. She glances around, plays a little with a spider in the sink, and she isn’t too concerned. Then, “boom!,” her section of the rig implodes, blasting water all around her as she and another crew member narrowly escape to a temporary safe place. And by temporary, I mean safe for the next 30 seconds or so. Norah eventually finds herself squaring off against sea creatures on the ocean floor in a deep sea horror flick that’s decent enough to warrant a viewing, but far from classic. Stewart’s star power, and some decent effects, put this one over-the-top.

5Marriage story Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are incredible in writer/director Noah Baumbach’s best movie yet, an alternately searing, touching and hilarious look at a marriage’s end times. Nicole and Charlie Barber work in a theater company together, she the performer and he the director. The movie starts with them in counseling, going through a divorce where they promise each other things will remain amicable and lawyers won’t get involved. Nicole will go to Los Angeles and pursue film acting while Charlie stays in New York to facilitate his latest play making it to Broadway. They are determined to share custody of their young son. This will be a pleasant divorce. Then … the lawyers get involved, of course. Early in the film, it’s a wonder why these two are getting divorced. They’re both quiet about it, and, heck, you might even think there’s a chance they can pull out of the nosedive and make a happy landing. Nope. Just, nope. This director will not be trafficking in easy endings. Baumbach comes from a place that knows two people can really love each other, yet put themselves through a progressive, scorching hell to achieve separation. Nicole tries to remain civil, but Charlie has done stuff that’s going to result in things that will make the proceedings a little rougher than first thought. Nicole gets herself a lawyer in Nora (Laura Dern just being the best Laura Dern ever) and Charlie eventually caves and gets one too in Bert Spitz (a funny Alan Alda) and his eventual replacement Jay (an even funnier Ray Liotta). I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this movie contains the most realistic, earth-shattering, devastatingly honest marital fight I’ve ever seen in a movie. The participants in this scene simply had to have gotten medical assistance when it was all over. Driver and Johansson do things in this film you will not soon forget. (Streaming on Netflix.)