LOGLINE: Detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) become fugitives from the law when they are forced to bend the rules in their investigation into corruption in the Miami PD and their former captain’s (Joe Pantoliano) alleged involvement with the Romanian Mafia. “You’re my bad boys,” says Capt. Conrad Howard on a video. “Now clear my name.”
CAST: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhea Seehorn, Jacob Scipio, Melanie Liburd, Tasha Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Joe Pantoliano. Directed by Adil & Bilall
REVIEW: A classic odd couple, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, maintain the chemistry that has fueled this franchise for almost three decades, and “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is all the better for it. They’ve slowed somewhat, but their breathless back-and-forth, usually while they’re under fire from all directions, is as sharp, and funny as ever.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that much of the movie feels like an exercise in nostalgia. The directorial style, courtesy of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, pays homage to the frenetic style of original director Michael Bay. To reinforce their debt to the franchise’s former director, they even give Bay a quick cameo.
There’s nothing much fresh about “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.” Old characters are brought back (sometimes from the dead), the only thing more generic than the villain feels is the dialogue (eg: “You’re playing a game and don’t know the rules.”) and with the exception of a hungry, giant alligator, the peril is same old.
Cudos, however, to whoever came up with the idea of Smith taking a (Oscar) slap (or three) to the face in a scene that suggests he’s open to atonement for his mistreatment of Chris Rock.
“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” delivers what you expect from the franchise, which is a crowd-pleasing mix of action and comedy. The story may be implausible but the chemistry that drives it is completely tangible.
In the world of The Expendables it’s not enough to simply kill the enemy. In their boomtastic alternate reality every kill must be overkill and accompanied by a quip to punctuate the death.
“Expend4bles,” the all-star shoot ‘em up now playing in theatres, delivers quips and kills galore, but to paraphrase Tony Jaa’s character Decha, “The more people you kill, the less joy you have.”
In the new film, CIA agent Max Drummer (Andy García) rounds up the team of elite mercenaries—wizened warriors Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), sniper Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), demolitions expert Toll Road (Randy Couture) and new recruits Easy Day (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), and Galan (Jacob Scipio)—to prevent terrorist Suarto Rahmat (Iko Uwais) from stealing nuclear bomb detonators from Muammar Gaddafi’s former old chemical weapons plant in Libya.
When things go sideways, Christmas becomes the expendable Expendable, kicked out of the group and replaced by his mercenary girlfriend Gina (Megan Fox) and her deadly colleague Lash (Levy Tran). As the new band of soldiers set off to curtail a conflict that could ignite World War III, Christmas does his part to bring peace on earth.
This 103-minute ode to murder, mayhem and manliness doesn’t waste any time getting to the money shot. The first blast of action in “Expend4bles” lights up the screen roughly one minute in, followed by lots of talky bits that come between the boomy bits.
The talky bits are mostly lines of dialogue that sound lifted from the “Action Movies for Dummies” guidebook—generic stuff like “This is gonna be fun,” as the bullets start to fly—with the odd nod to something deeper, like a settling of accounts for one’s past. When we first meet Decha, for instance, he’s a former warrior, a reformed man of violence. But his peaceful ways don’t last long, because in “The Expendables” if you’re not a killer, you’re just filler.
If you’ve seen the other movies in the franchise, you already know what to expect; lots of R-rated violence, some dodgy CGI and a body count that would make John Wick blush. But this instalment feels different, less an homage to the days when Stallone and Schwarzenegger (who sat out this chapter) were blockbuster action stars and more a collection of familiar faces cut loose in a Jason “man-on-a-mission” Statham video game. It’s the Statham Show, which dissipates the camaraderie that gave the first movies a cohesive vibe.
By the time the end credits roll the thrill is gone. Despite its all-star cast, action sequences and kill ratio, “Expend4bles” proves Decha’s, “The more people you kill, the less joy you have” philosophy correct. On their fourth time out, the Expendables seems more expendable than ever.
There is perfect casting and then there is Nicolas Cage, playing a heightened version of himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” a meta new action comedy now playing in theatres.
Off screen Cage is a larger-than-life character, an Oscar winner known for his penchant for purchasing dinosaur skulls, tax troubles and wildly uneven cinematic output. He brings the weight of that public persona to this movie, making myth out of his own legend of self-indulgence.
Cage plays Cage as a faded Hollywood prince. Once a box office draw, he’s down on his luck, going broke and in need of a big money gig. He has become the White Claw of serious actors. He’s good, but no one with taste is taking him seriously.
Producers, scared off by his wild-at-heart reputation, give him the Hollywood kiss off. We love you, but are going in a different direction.
Depressed, he decides to leave Hollywood. “I’m done,” he says. “I’m quitting acting. Tell the trades it was a tremendous honour to be part of storytelling and myth-making.”
Before he leaves the life, he gets an offer he can’t refuse. Olive magnate Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) will pay Cage a million dollars to attend his birthday bash in Mallorca. The actor reluctantly agrees, and soon finds himself drinking and cliff-diving at Javi’s beautiful estate.
Javi is a huge fan, with a collection of cage collectibles. “Is this supposed to be me?” cage asks, gesturing at a statue of himself. “It’s grotesque. I’ll give you twenty thousand for it.”
Turns out the starstruck Javi isn’t what he appears. “Do you know who you’re spending time with?” CIA agent Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) asks Cage. “He’s one of the most ruthless men on the face of the earth.” They think Javi kidnapped the daughter of the president of Catalonia to influence an upcoming election.
Vivian and Agent Martin (Ike Barinholtz) recruit Cage to work undercover on Javi’s estate to get to the bottom of the case. “That little girl doesn’t have anyone,” says Vivian, “and if you leave, I don’t know what will happen to her.”
It’s a chance to do some good, but for Cage, it is also the role of a lifetime.
“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is an entertaining, oddball movie. Essentially a one joke premise—i.e.: Cage as Cage—it plays with the tropes of many of Cage’s films, but doesn’t play as strictly homage or satire. It’s something else. What, exactly, I’m not quite sure.
It’s almost as if this is Nic Cage’s screw you to the folks who deride him for being a working actor who pumps out two or three movies a year. “I’ve always seen this as a job, as work,” he says, as though he feels bogged down by the weight of the critical appraisal of his artistic choices.
But this isn’t a movie about score settling. It’s a silly action comedy, unabashedly interested in entertaining the audience. It occasionally errs, mistaking familiar references from Cage’s filmography for jokes. It’s that “meme-ification”—the pinpointing of Cage call-backs—of the film’s humour that prevents it from becoming a knee slapper all the way through. There are laugh out loud moments, but there are more moments that feel more Instagram ready than cinematic.
Still, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is a good time, worth the price of admission to see young Cage advising older Cage and commit the most surreal example of actorly self-love ever seen on film.
