acid reflects

The Bad Boys return for a fourth run on the big screen, screaming age is but a dollar number.

At the end of Bad Boys For Life (2020,) Mike (Will Smith) appeared to be striking a deal with his imprisoned drug-dealing son Armando (Jacob Scipio.) That part of the story continues in Ride or Die, where Mike and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) investigate the posthumous corruption charges against former Miami PD captain Howard (Joe Pantaliano.) The buddy cops are set up as working with the criminals, so they work against the system to clear all their names and catch the real guilty baddies.

Almost everyone from For Life reprise their roles in Ride or Die, including Paola Nuñez, (erstwhile Philippine Tourism ambassador) Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig and a few quick appearances from DJ Khaled, Tiffany Haddish and Lionel Messi? McSteamy Eric Dane joins the cast as the new baddy, McGrath. Former Mr Fantastic Ioan Gruffud is here and forgettable as Lockwood.

Ride or Die is just par for course among the rest of the films in this buddy cop franchise that started in 1995 under the helm of Michael Bay, and now under the Belgian filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. That long franchise history may have enough built-in fans to sustain another (fifth) outing as only age and inflamed muscular joints can allow – already showing in some of Smith’s and especially Lawrence’s fairly limited action shots. To be fair, from a filmmaking standpoint, the directors aggressively make use of dynamic movement and angles to keep the action sustained, even when Mike and Marcus are just c̴a̴t̴c̴h̴i̴n̴g̴ ̴t̴h̴e̴i̴r̴ ̴b̴r̴e̴a̴t̴h̴s̴ standing, throwing punchlines at each other. At some point in the climax, the camera swoops down as a drone, takes a closeup of Mike shooting enemies, flips to become a first-person shooter POV, flips back to Mike’s closeup, then zooms out to reveal a mid shot of the room all in one take. Not as choreographed as Extraction 2 or as relentless as The Raid. So yeah, if you liked the past films, you’ll like Ride or Die, with another salute-worthy performance from Dennis Greene as Marcus’ very grown-up soldier son, Reggie. Won’t be surprised if this makes money and a fifth Bad Boys is announced.

It’s been said that the rest of the world sees the US the way US Americans see Florida – it’s Disneyworld, but also Mar-a-Lago. Racially diverse, but also book-banning. It’s like a dysfunctional sibling to the rest of the States. Where am I going with this thesis? That Murica has a guns problem – and the way I see Bad Boys: Ride or Die is that it is such a display of the 2nd Amendment. An entertaining, funny and action-packed celebration of the time when there was no issue about wokeness, and if Murica wanted an action movie, it better have lots of gun shooting and car chases. There’s a tongue-in-cheek scene where Mike and Marcus stray into a 2nd Amendment, Confederate-flagging compound, and the two try to lie their way out from a couple of rifle-toting white guys. Nothing offensive about the joke, I think. But for me, that’s the thing – the film does portray that there’s nothing offensive with carrying rifles on your person. The NRA could endorse this film. Long live Murica.

Its sensibilities may belong to a different time, but Ride or Die’s comedy and action slap really hard.

I have a feeling Ride or Die will make good money at the theaters. Curious to see its boxoffice demographics.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is in Philippine cinemas now, from Columbia Pictures.