Bad Boys II
directed by Michael Bay
story by Ron Shelton and Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley
screenplay by Ron Shelton and Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley and Jerry Stahl
based on characters created by George Gallo
starring Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Gabrielle Union, Jordi Molla and Joe Pantoliano

        It has been tragic that  multiplexes have been filled with shorter blockbusters in recent years.  Costs that went into special effects took precedent over budgets for script thickness and length of film stock.  Deflated running times meant more profit for studios and theater owners so more showings could be fit into a business day.  Yet at 90 minutes and less, many important elements were lost, including story and character development.
          This year is showing a different side, though.  More sequels and bankable concepts are guaranteeing studios their money back, allowing them to spend more cash and approve inflated final cuts.  Bad Boys II is one such picture which features heavy star-power both on and off screen, familiar characters and promise of tons of action.  Unfortunately, they forgot to fill the extra running time with any sort of quality between the action sequences.
          I'm not quite sure why Michael Bay decided to make this sequel to his 1995 debut.  He has since made one of the greatest action films of the last ten years (The Rock), an overrated and oversuccessful commercial for NASA (Armageddon) and an underrated though imperfect epic of American propaganda (Pearl Harbor).   Those movies were all huge in scope and story.  The story for Bad Boys II could be found on an hour long television drama.
          Family man Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) and playboy Mike Lowrey (Smith) are still partners in a Miami narcotics unit which to my understanding from the picture has very little assignment of duty or procedure.  Sure there are rules, which you can tell are being broken whenever their boss (Pantoliano) starts his yelling.  As far as what these rules are is anyone's guess except that destruction of civilian property must be warranted with successful evidence seizure.  Considering they show up to a potential drug bust in Lowrey's new silver Ferrari which they then use to pursue a deadly gang of dreadlocked Haitians and later wonder why the city won't reimburse them for damages shows their apparent lack of any police training.
         The two are on a case to bring down the city's biggest dealer of ecstasy, a Cuban (Molla) with beautiful blue eyes and grotesque speaking skills.  The Cuban's main buyer  is a Russian club owner(Peter Stormare) with an even worse accent and worse dialogue.  There is a scene in which the two characters discuss business at two ends of a long dining table and you hope that they will stop talking, laugh for a moment and then begin again in their real voices, done with the mockery of the their professional stereotypes.
           Stormare has proven himself a strong character actor in films like Fargo and Dancer in the Dark, though he is falling into a Hollywood trap, frequenting cheap fare as the thick-accented villain.  He is more humorous here than other recent appearances, though, and is far enough in the background in a fairly unnecessary role.   Molla, on the other hand, playing the actual lackluster villain, may actually talk like that.  He ruined most of Blow for me as well, so I haven't had the opportunity or interest to find out more about him as an actor.
            The Cuban also seems to be doing business with undercover DEA agent Sydney (Union) who also happens to be Burnett's sister and Lowrey's girlfriend, though the latter relationship is unknown to Burnett so as to set up some cliche tension and drama between the partners.  Some of the story gets confusing after that, but finally after two hours, Sydney's cover is blown and she is kidnapped and brought to Cuba.  Then we are treated to the token Michael Bay mission sequence full of courageous silhouettes walking into a hangar, off-screen exposition over the preparation montage and helicopters flying at sunset.  This is what we are waiting for.
            Then, the actual mission is anticlimactic because we've seen the giant drug-dealer mansion stormed a million times in other films.  Aside from a decent chase sequence with a Hummer plowing down the hills of Cuba smashing up shacks along the way while being chase by the country's military, there is nothing satisfying about the mission. 
             Before that two hour mark there are some other fancy chases and fight sequences that do wonders for advertising the maneuverability of Ferrari, not that the company needs that kind of product placement.  Between the action is very little story.  There are countless scenes about the stability of Burnett and Lowrey which doesn't even attempt to compete with the complexities developed with charcters from Lethal Weapon, some sitcom suitable jokes regarding misinterpreted homosexuality and unknown drug ingestion, and a near identical plot to the admittedly superior 2 Fast 2 Furious, which is hopefully interpreted to be as insulting as I intend. 
            I can't say that Bad Boys II is the worst film I've seen this year.  It may be the most disappointing considering the director's past technical achievements, as bloated as they are.  Thanks to a script filled with too many action sequences, a thin story was stretched like a bag of trash being torn and strewn about by wild animals.  I felt no chemistry between the leads nor felt any kind of threat from the villains and so cared nothing for the story.  Critics have been attacking the recent Pirates of the Caribbean for being overlong.  At least that film had entertaining characters that you want to keep watching even if the plot hits a wall.  Bad Boys II has none of this redemption.  The whole thing is a dead end for the genre and giant wall for its talent.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence run from a mob of angry fans