All's Forgiven, Will Smith: A Review of Bad Boys: Ride or Die

 directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilail Fallah

written by Chris Bremner, Will Beall and George Gallo

In his first film that he actually shot after having slapped Chris Rock in the face at the 2022 Oscars, Will Smith revisits one of the characters who helped propel him to stardom, that of Miami detective Mike Lowry. As before, he is paired with comedian Martin Lawrence as fellow detective Marcus Burnett, as the Bad Boys hit the big screen once more.

The film opens with Mike getting married to his girlfriend Christine (Melanie Liburd) and with Marcus getting a heart attack during the reception. It was harrowing enough experience, but soon the partners have an altogether different problem: it seems that their beloved, deceased Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano, who appears in a series of recorded video messages) who was murdered in the last film by Mike's estranged son Armando (Jacob Scipio) at the behest of the drug cartel, is being framed by shady types headed by ex-Army Ranger James McGrath (Eric Dane) who fought against the cartel until he was captured and tortured. McGrath's operation has friends in very high places, so high that maybe not even Mike's boss Captain Rita Secada (Paula Nunez) and her new boyfriend, District Attorney Adam Lockwood (Ioan Gruffud) can help them. Mike and Marcus find themselves in a race against time to clear the captain's name, and soon it's clear they are in way over their heads.

Ever since the first of these films came out in 1995, back when co-producer Don Simpson was actually still alive, it should be clear that none of them was ever intended to be high art. The first one, made on a shoestring budget of USD19 million, was a solid piece of entertainment, deftly mixing action and comedy. The second movie, made on a much bigger budget, unfortunately suffered from a bloated running time and some ridiculous over-the-top action set pieces.  It was so off-putting that I didn't even catch the third movie, Bad Boys 4 Life, in theaters. After catching and enjoying it on Netflix, though, I was convinced that it was worth giving this franchise another shot in theaters, Will Smith's antics notwithstanding, and I'm glad I did. 

The filmmakers don't reinvent the wheel; as before, the film is anchored on the banter between Mike and Marcus, and the writers quite cannily age the characters along with actors, which makes them all the more relatable as much of the audience has grown old along with them.  The plot is paper-thin, of course, and a lot of the writing is just flat out silly, but that's really not what I came to see. 

On that note, the movie delivers exceptionally well on the action front, and it's worth pointing out that Belgian directors Adil and Bilail (as they are billed in the film's credits) have a really good eye for this sort of stuff. The action was pretty excellently choreographed and shot, and in a day and age when action sequences have been redefined by the likes of John Wick films, this was no mean feat. There is a flat-out brilliant use of drone shots in the climactic action set piece at the end of the film which is almost worth the price of admission by itself. Speaking of John Wick there is a surprising bit of action from a rather unexpected character late in the film, which involves a home invasion. It was interesting to see some John Wickesque ass kicking played for laughs, but darned if it doesn't work like a charm.

All told, this was a genuinely fun movie, one whose existence was arguably well-justified. I honestly don't know if they could keep this up with future installments but in the unlikely event that Sony ends this franchise here, well, they'll do so on a high note.  

8/10

Truly Pernicious: A Review of "Hit Man" (HEAVY SPOILERS)

SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW UNLESS  YOU HAVE SEEN THE FILM OR DO NOT MIND HAVING KEY PLOT DETAILS SPOILED

directed by Richard Linklater

 written by Richard Linklater and Glenn Powell

Currently charming critics and audiences on Netflix, Hit Man is the latest film from auteur Richard Linklater, who directed Jack Black to notoriety in School of Rock and who spent over a decade filming the acclaimed film Boyhood. 

This time around Linklater directs Hollywood's latest "It" boy Glen Powell (who was the smooth-talking 21st century update on the "Iceman" character in the nostalgia extravaganza Top Gun: Maverick) in a film that can best be described as an odd hybrid between a romantic comedy and an appallingly clumsy critique of the justice system. 

Gary Johnson (Powell) seems like a relatively normal guy on the surface. He teaches philosophy and psychology at his local community college and has a whole bunch of cats to keep him company at home. What most people don't know about him, though, is that he leads an extraordinary double life as, of all things, a hit man, though not a real one. No, Johnson simply pretends to be a hit man as a part-time gig for the local police, enticing would-be clients looking to off someone in their lives to engage his services and not stopping until these supposed clients provide evidence incriminating themselves such as the command to kill and the money for the job. 

It's an unusual job, but it's one Johnson does exceedingly well, even though he starts out in the film as a substitute for the corrupt policeman Jasper (Austin Amelio) who's been suspended for beating up minors. The arrest count  he racks  up is impressive, but when he meets prospective "client" Madison (Adria Arjona) who is looking to have her husband bumped off, he finds himself smitten and unable to complete the sting, instead advising Madison to take the money she would have paid him and start a new life for herself.

 The cops are disappointed with Gary, but his track record has been so good that they'll willing to let his slip-up slide. Things get more complicated, however, when not too long afterward he meets up with Madison, still in his hitman persona, and starts a steamy affair with her, one which he obviously has to conceal from his colleagues in the police, and one which threatens to complicate  his life even further when Madison's husband, furious at her for taking a lover, decides to hire Gary to kill her.

A genuinely funny and charming movie up until this point, the movie then takes a ridiculously dark turn when, apparently having written his two leads into a corner, Linklater straight up has them straight-up murder a police officer and then ride of into the sunset. Yes, you read that right: Gary and Madison murder Jasper, who, having figured out their angle, tries to extort them for a cut of Madison's late husband's insurance money.  This isn't some madcap sequence where they kill the guy in self-defense or he kills himself by some humorous accident; it's just straight up murder.  Specifically, Madison drugs Jasper, and Gary, who at this point has never killed anyone in his life, puts a bag over his head.  This isn't done in a fit of panic, either; as Powell portrays him, Gary acts with the calm resolve of a cold-blooded killer.  

  

The problem I have with the resolution to this story is that this movie isn't written as some dark satire critiquing the legal system but as an emphatically light romantic comedy, so this turn it takes basically ruins the whole thing, like a bottle of soy sauce emptied on a perfect apple pie.  Part of the narrative feels distinctly like a critique of the justice system as Gary attends the court hearings of the people he has entrapped into hiring his fake hit men, but it's never meaningfully developed. Also, by resolving the film so sloppily Linklater ensures that any ethical discussion would be hypocritical on his part considering he allows murderers to walk away scot-free. 

It's honestly a shame because, in truth, Powell, is a pretty compelling actor, and given the critical acclaim this movie has received (from people who aren't me), this movie is quite an effective showcase of both his comedic talent and his credibility as a leading man. It's honestly just a shame that the ending of this movie had to go to the dogs, even though it's weirdly consistent with Linklater's mindset that he showed in a much older movie, one I'll write about next. 

1/10

The Movie That Humiliated Hollywood: A Review of Godzilla: Minus One

 directed by Takashi Yamazaki

written by Yamazaki, Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata

Last year, Hollywood's cookie-cutter, conveyor-belt approach to making movies blew up in its face in the worst way possible, with a majority of its major, big-budget releases tanking at the box-office nearly all year round. No one was safe, whether it was the once almighty Disney, whose flops included a Marvel movie, an original animated movie and an Indiana Jones movie, or even Tom Cruise, whose Mission Impossible movie managed to underperform at the box office even after he had dragged it to completion during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

It was against the backdrop of these creative and financial disasters, that Godzilla: Minus One, a low-budget, entirely Japanese-produced disaster movie starring the iconic kaiju, opened to nearly universal critical acclaim and global box-office glory, taking nearly everyone by surprise, arguably including the filmmakers.

Godzilla: Minus One takes place immediately after the Second World War has flattened Japan. During the dying days of the war, a failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryonosuku Kamiki) lands on a secluded island populated by mechanics, asking them to attend to his plane. The lead mechanic Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) realizes that Shikishima is a deserter, but before anything else happens the small island is invaded by a gigantic creature known to the locals as Godzilla. The creature kills everyone on the island except for Shikishima and Tachibana, whom it leaves for dead.

Shikishima returns to the mainland to find his home completely destroyed, and as he struggles to rebuild, he finds himself starting a rather unusual family with the drifter Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and an abandoned baby she has adopted. Shikishima finds well-paying work as a minesweeper, shooting mines with pinpoint accuracy from a small boat, and all seems to be going well for him. Even as the Americans conduct nuclear testing in the nearby seas in Bikini Atoll, Japan strives to rebuild.

Then, to everyone's shock, Godzilla reappears on the mainland, only this time it has grown much, much bigger as a result of the nuclear detonations. The gigantic creature leaves wide swaths of destruction in its wake, and soon the people of Japan find themselves in a race against time to figure out how to stop it from flattening what's left of their country. After suffering another unthinkable loss, Shikishima volunteers to lead the charge, together with his minesweeping crewmates, Captain Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki) Engineer Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and Crewman Mizushima (Yuki Yamada).  Noda and other volunteers come up with a daring plan to take down Godzilla once and for all, but it also requires someone to act as bait for the monster by piloting an airplane, a job for which Shikishima is eminently qualified. There's only one mechanic he will trust to help him prepare his plane, though: Tachibana.  The stage is set, and Shikishima and his allies make one final, valiant stand against the seemingly invincible creature known only as Godzilla.  

The makers of this film get right virtually everything that the 2014 American film, directed by Gareth Edwards, got completely wrong. First and foremost, they created characters with whom the audience could connect and identify. While Shikishima's deep trauma and survivor's guilt are front and center, it's clear that everyone else in the supporting cast carries some version of that pain considering the state of their country, and when they express anguish upon realizing what they are facing their despair is palpable.  While we do not get to intimately know these characters, they are nonetheless both written and acted effectively enough to impress on us why we should care whether or not they make it to the end of the movie.

Even though Godzilla has relatively little screen time, the build-up between his appearances is commendably effective. Each of the monster's appearances in the film is timed to near perfection and follows meaningful scenes of character development and world-building as opposed to slogging exposition or filler.  Of course, by limiting his exposure to pivotal scenes, the filmmakers are able to stretch their limited budget as far as possible. The digital effects that bring Godzilla to life are remarkable indeed, and while the creature definitely suffers from a pretty noticeable case of "dead eye" in several scenes, the computer-generated imagery on display here still puts to shame the effects work of Hollywood films which had budgets that were well over ten times what this film cost to make (I'm looking at YOU, Thor Love and Thunder).

The film still has a firm connection to its B-movie roots, from the occasional jerky movement of the creature to the sometimes exaggerated actions of its actors, but that only adds to its earnest charm. These guys are definitely punching well above their weight here.     

 The film isn't quite the masterpiece its biggest fans are touting it to be; some of the inherent silliness of the storytelling used weighs it down a little bit, like the crucial scenes where Godzilla appears to be standing in the open sea even though the water beneath him is several hundred meters deep. All that aside, though, it's a sterling example of tight, well-woven storytelling that Hollywood, in its never-ending quest for pushing product on its hapless audience, seems to have forgotten.  Here's hoping Godzilla: Minus One teaches Hollywood how to make good movies again. 

8.5/10