The first “Bad Boys” came out in 1995, which means we’re officially entering aging-action-star territory with this franchise. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” a fourth installment, is directed by the up-and-coming action filmmaking team Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, known as Adil & Bilall, who took over directing duties from Michael Bay with 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life.” There seem to be only two options for an action star — or franchise — that’s getting up in years.
You can either take the Tom Cruise route, returning to a text that was originally all flash and sensation, and infusing it with a sense of soulful poignancy as the character (and actor) reckons with what he’s sacrificed in his pursuit of pure adrenaline (e.g. “Top Gun: Maverick” ).
The other option is to join the crude, cynical supergroup modeled by the “Expendables” series, in which beloved stars josh and jostle for a cash grab. But for the “Bad Boys” films, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence and producer Jerry Bruckheimer aren’t looking to alter much about what made the franchise successful in the first place.
In fact, Smith, who has faced significant public upheaval in the past few years, is strangely ageless and unaffected in his performance as Miami detective Mike Lowery, easily slipping back into Mike-mode here. What’s weird is that it feels so normal to watch him in this role. Adil & Bilall take the basic scaffolding and.