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Every long-running action franchise hits a point where the lead character groans they’re too old for this. In “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” Martin Lawrence goes one step further, and you should stop reading here if you want the details to come as a surprise. Minutes into this fourth installment, Lawrence’s Miami detective Marcus Burnett clutches his heart at partner Mike Lowrey’s (Will Smith) wedding and drops dead.

The series that never says no to a bikini montage suddenly gets metaphysical. Returning directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (“Bad Boys for Life”) pull off a surprisingly evocative sequence in the underworld, imagining the Great Beyond as a spectral Margaritavilla. The ghost of Marcus and Mike’s former captain (Joe Pantoliano), murdered in the last film, 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life,” is spotted kicking it on the beach with a (presumably dead) parrot.



Never fear. Given the two choices in the title, Marcus chooses to ride on. He’s jolted back to life, well, enlivened, snapping awake with the zest of a Ziegfeld girl and dancing through traffic as he boasts of his immortality.

Lawrence’s high spirits also defibrillate the franchise. Turns out the Bad Boys films needed less swagger and more dorky, goofy joy. But really, this is Will Smith’s resurrection.

“Ride or Die” is his first popcorn flick since he won an Oscar and tarnished his reputation on the same night. Smith appears chastened in a film whose script (by Chris Bremner and franchise.

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