At one point in “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” Miami police detective Mike Lowrey enters a panic attack-induced trance while bullets are flying. There’s only one way out. Martin Lawrence smacks Will Smith in the face not once, not twice, but three times, so that the man with top billing can shake it off and get back to the killing.
Chris Rock is nowhere in sight in this movie. But at that moment, the footage spinning in the audience’s mind alongside what they’re watching is a flashback to the wallopalooza at the 2022 Oscars, when Smith over-avenged a “G.I.
Jane” joke emcee Rock made at Jada Pinkett Smith’s expense. The “Bad Boys” franchise is all about righteous payback, so when Lawrence triple-slaps Smith it’s the two-years-later comeuppance the audience knew would come someday, somehow. If the movie’s about anything other than franchise maintenance in a dark time, it’s about karma.
(Lawrence’s character, Marcus Burnett, undergoes a near-death experience and can’t shut up about past lives.) If those slaps are photographed and edited with the artless blunt force and cramped, cellphone-screen-friendly framing of nearly everything else in “Ride or Die,” too bad. Those are matters of technique and finesse, neither of which matters here.
Millions remain loyal to the “Bad Boys” vehicles. They enjoy watching Smith and Lawrence do their thing. I enjoy watching them do their thing.
But this time, the thing comes with a little extra strain, sloppier moo.
