Bad Boys (1995)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1995
	Director: Michael Bay (Armageddon, Transformers 1-5)
	Actors: Will Smith (Independence Day, After Earth, Bright), Martin Lawrence (Blue Streak), Tchéky Karyo (Doberman), Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix), Téa Leoni (Deep Impact)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 10.01.2019, VOD, 42" TV screen.
Synopsis: Two hip detectives protect a witness to a murder while investigating a case of stolen heroin from the evidence storage room from their police precinct.
Review: After a full career in music videos and commercials, Michael Bay directed with Bad Boys his first feature-length film. This is pretty impressive when you see the quality of the end product. OK the cinematography is not the best, there you see he still had to learn, but otherwise the movie clearly shows that he knew what he was doing and where he wanted to go. Looking back now, it seems like he wanted to re-introduce the 80's Action genre and its mix of Action scenes and Comedy, but adjusted to more recent humor. In fact Action movies not to take seriously. That was a hit and he went on with more movies and franchises in the same style, in particular Armageddon and all the Transformers movies, to saturation. Countless modern movies follow in his footsteps, I am thinking about the latest in the Fast and Furious saga although they have less humor. The movie is made easy for you to watch: purely bad guys, a damsel in distress, cool cops cracking jokes, making fun of each other, funny misunderstandings, sex jokes, car chases and tons of explosions with capital letters. There is also the shouting unhappy police commissioner (nice Joe Pantoliano) directly from the 80's movies. I think the setting in Miami and the cops investigating on drugs rather than the usual robberies or crimes is also a welcome change that contributed to the success of the movie. The downside of this formula is that because the movie doesn't take itself seriously, neither can you and it is hard to feel any serious drama. For example the death early in the movie that connects all the characters and drives them ends up being forgotten and almost joked about.
Rating: 6 /10