Review: "BAD BOYS" Has Had a Surprisingly Long Life

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 113 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Bad Boys (1995)

Running time:  119 minutes (1 hour, 59 minutes)

MPAA – R for intense violent action and pervasive strong language

DIRECTOR:  Michael Bay

WRITERS:  Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland, and Doug Richardson; from a story by George Gallo

PRODUCERS:  Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson

CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Howard Atherton

EDITOR:  Christian Wagner

COMPOSER:  Mark Mancina

ACTION/COMEDY/THRILLER/CRIME

Starring:  Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Tea Leoni, Joe Pantoliano, Tcheky Karyo, Theresa Randle, Marg Helgenberger, Nestor Serrano, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Saverio Guerra, Michael Imperioli, and Karen Alexander

As usual, a cog in the Hollywood system had written an action/comedy for Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey, two funny white men.  Perhaps, the white studio bosses never thought of persons of colors playing the parts and playing them not only well, but also better than the actors of the default skin color.  By happy accident, two tremendously talented comic actors, who also happened to be men of color inherited the parts, and, thus was born Bad Boys.  Lord knows, we can never again think of Lovitz and Carvey, two milky-white Americans, as proper for these roles, not that there’s anything wrong with one’s skin color being that white.

Bad Boys is a 1995 American buddy-cop film and action-comedy directed by Michael Bay.  Bad Boys focuses on two savvy, Black detectives who try to protect a witness to murder while also investigating the theft of heroin from their police precinct’s evidence room.

Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) are two hip detectives; at least they seem cooler than their Miami PD colleagues, but they can take the heat that comes with their job.  As the film begins, they’ve already made a major heroin bust, but a gang of well-equipped thieves breaks into the precinct’s evidence room and steals the dope.  Obviously, the raid is an inside job, so the precinct takes the blame.  Burnett and Lowrey’s Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) feels the heat and returns it to the boys, putting the onus on them to find the dope.  Making matters more complicated, they get saddled with protecting Julie Mott (Tea Leoni) a murder witness somehow connected to the smack thieves.

According to stories from the set of Bad Boys, director Michael Bay, Lawrence, and Smith hated the script, so they ad-libbed a lot of the dialogue.  This was Bay’s first feature film, but he’d made a name for himself directing music videos for Tina Turner and “Wilson Phillips” (among others) and commercials for Nike and Budweiser (among others).  Bay brings all the visual flair and clichés you could expect from music videos: quick-cut editing, dark alleyways full of steam, sexy chicks, and hot cars.  He mixed in car chases, tremendous explosions, cartoonish violence, and gunfights with hundreds of rounds of ammunition.  Smith and Lawrence brought the comedy and the hip sensibility to play the characters so over the top that you’d think they were heroes right out of a comic book.  It works to an extent.  Bad Boys is a very funny, exciting, and visually agile action movie.

If anything, it’ll be remembered for its African-American leads, unusual for an cop buddy movie/action flick.  Beyond that, Bay introduced his over the top visual style that he would bring all his heart-pounding, action vehicles:  slow motion camera buzzing around a posing action stud, panoramic shots of the sky, narrow escapes from devastating fire balls, etc.  Bad Boys is pleasant and fun, nothing important, but it stands out in the white bread world of Hollywood action romps.  Certainly, Lawrence and Smith are more believable as renegade cops than say, Josh Hartnett or Ben Affleck.

6 of 10

B

★★★ out of 4 stars

Edited:  Friday, June 28, 2024

The text is copyright © 2024 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Review: "Hollywood Ending" is Hollow (Happy B'day, Woody Allen)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 249 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Hollywood Ending (2002)
Running time:  112 minutes (1 hour, 52 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for some drug references and sexual material
WRITER/DIRECTOR:  Woody Allen
PRODUCER:  Letty Aronson
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Wedigo von Schultzendorff
EDITOR:  Alisa Lepselter

COMEDY

Starring:  Woody Allen, Téa Leoni, Treat Williams, George Hamilton, Debra Messing, Mark Rydell, Jodie Markell, Peter Gerety, Barney Cheng, Lu Yu, Isaac Mizrahi, Tiffani Thiessen, and Mark Webber

The subject of this movie review is Hollywood Ending, a 2002 comedy from writer/director Woody Allen.  The film follows a movie director who is forced to work with his ex-wife and is also suffering from a case of psychosomatic blindness.

Val Waxman (Woody Allen) is a once-famous movie director who is so down on his luck that he’s down to his last shot at getting his career back.  Luckily, his former wife, Ellie (Téa Leoni), is a development executive at Galaxie Pictures and is the fiancé of the company’s studio boss, Hal Yeager (Treat Williams), and Ellie talks Hal into letting Val direct their big budget remake of a 1940’s film, “The City that Never Sleeps.”  However, Val’s paranoia and neurotic fears cause him to go psychosomatically blind.  Val’s agent Al Hack (Mark Rydell) and a sympathetic Chinese translator conspire to cover Val’s temporary disability, but with Andrea Ford (Jodie Markell), a nosy Esquire magazine writer, around the set, it’ll be hard to keep Hal from discovering that Val is trying to direct a film when he can’t see.  Will Ellie pitch in to save Val?

Hollywood Ending is not quite the typical Woody Allen flick.  It is indeed a New York-based tale of dysfunctional lovers trying to get back together.  Half the plot, however, involves the politics and struggles of getting a big studio movie made, and pretty much everything in Hollywood Ending related to that is funny.  The romance is nice, but all too familiar for those who’ve seen lots of Woody, and it made me yearn for this movie to get back to the part about movie making.  There aren’t any great performances, although Treat Williams and Mark Rydell as a studio exec and Val’s agent respectively do generate a little heat.  Hollywood Ending is strictly for Woody Allen fans and people who like to watch insider films about movie making.  Even the Hollywood ending seems a bit hollow.

6 of 10
B

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Updated:  Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

Review: "Jurassic Park III" is a Third of the Original Film

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 2 of 2001 (No. 2) by Leroy Douresseaux

Jurassic Park III (2001)
Running time: 92 minutes (1 hour, 32 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for intense sci-fi terror and violence
DIRECTOR: Joe Johnston
WRITERS: Peter Buchman, Alexander Payne, and Jim Taylor (based on characters created by Michael Crichton)
PRODUCERS: Larry J. Franco and Kathleen Kennedy
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Shelly Johnson
EDITOR: Robert Dalva
COMPOSER: Don Davis
Razzie Award nominee

SCI-FI/ACTION/ADVENTURE/HORROR/THRILLER

Starring: Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter, John Diehl, Bruce A. Young, and Laura Dern

The subject of this movie review is Jurassic Park III, a 2001 science fiction and dinosaur movie from director Joe Johnston. Steven Spielberg, who directed the first two films in the Jurassic Park franchise, executive produced this film. Although musical themes by John Williams, who composed the music for the first two films, are used, Don Davis provides the musical score for Jurassic Park III.

Jurassic Park III is purely and simply product; it is created and delivered to its consumers in the form of movies, toys, and interactive media. The movie is a quick, chaotic thrill, that attempts to waste nothing via tight, concise action and storytelling and wastes all its potential to be a really good movie in an attempt to make sure no one gets too long a glance and at this scared, awkward baby.

Based more on the Steven Spielberg directed 1993 original than the 1997 Spielberg follow up The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2, this movie stars Sam Neill who reprises his role from the original as Dr. Alan Grant. William H. Macy and Tea Leoni play a divorced couple that tricks Dr. Grant into finding their son (Trevor Morgan) who is presumed missing on an island used by InGen, the dinosaur creating frankencorp, to produce dino specimens for their dino theme parks.

The cast, led by, Neill is up to the task of making a really good film. Neill is earnest and believable as Grant, and the character fits him like old, familiar clothes. Macy is always a pleasure to watch. His Paul Kirby is a weak, flawed and disingenuous man who climbs out of the morass of wimp hood into manhood as the film progress. Leoni’s Amanda Kirby is equally up to the task of transformation, and that is shocking. She is a likeable actress, but she is usually one note only; it was refreshing to see her play a character that can actually grow as the movie progresses. Morgan as their son Eric and Alessandro Nivola as Grant’s assistant Billy Brennan are also both fully fleshed three-dimensional characters. The viewer cares about these characters, and we cringe when they are in danger as much as we cheer them on their quest for survival.

These wonderful characters are the mark of strong writing, but what does go wrong? Johnston is a capable director and has shown the ability to control the pace of an SFX film that could get out of control in less skilled hands, as he did in Jumanji (1995). It seems as if the movie is hung on a thin, thread. Its premise is a basic and quick “get in, snatch and grab, get out.” The creators are blessed with even more knowledge about dinosaurs than its two predecessors, as well as SFX (special effects) and CGI (computer generated imagery) capabilities that surpass the original's (a movie that is still as good today as it was back in 1993).

One gets the sense that the filmmakers were very concerned about making a short movie, one in which the audience would not get to restless. That’s understandable. No matter how good the computer and effects work get, or how much new technology dates the original, any follow up to Jurassic Park cannot have the impact that the original did. Every dino sighting in the first film was a thrill; it was like discovering a whole new world. Jurassic Park was and will always be a landmark of cinema, a testament to both Spielberg’s savvy and skill and a testament to Hollywood SFX men, the special ones who always introduce us to something that we never thought we’d see on the big screen. They show us the amazing and do it with such class, quality, and skill that they leave us breathless and speechless and wanting more.

So how can part three compete with that? The sequel deals with it by running away from trying to be something special. It scampers through the dino-infested jungle of its predecessors like a madman, as afraid of its own shadow as it is of the raptors.

Granted that the characters are fighting for their lives, they rarely take the time to stop and observe something that would and should leave them speechless. A hallmark of the first was how the characters could be both fascinated and horrified by the wonderful things before them. They’re seeing real living breathing dinosaurs, and they’re only mildly interested. Yes, they’re genetic replicants, but these dinos are as close to the real thing as they’ll probably ever see. Even Dr. Grant didn’t seem too awed by the appearance of this film’s giant predator villain, the Spinosaurus, which runs through the film like a clumsy, wrecking bawl, screeching and slobbering all over the proceedings. Even the new look raptors mostly seem to be stiff and nervous models on the runway of an annual Paris toy show.

Through all this, one can see the skill and talent of Johnston and his writers, which includes Alexander Payne, the auteur of the (sadly) ignored Election. Even in a quick 90 minutes, one can see the quality of the work of the cast and crew. It’s a shame we got a truncated Reader’s Digest version of a story that could have been so much more. Still, it was as nice a treat as one can expect from a summer movie.

6 of 10
B

NOTES:
2002 Razzie Awards: 1 nomination: “Worst Remake or Sequel”

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Review: "Tower Heist" Captures Classic Eddie Murphy

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 92 (of 2011) by Leroy Douresseaux

Tower Heist (2011)
Running time: 104 minutes (1 hour, 44 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for language and sexual content
DIRECTOR: Brett Ratner
WRITERS: Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson; from a story by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, and Ted Griffin
PRODUCERS: Brian Grazer, Eddie Murphy, and Kim Roth
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Dante Spinotti
EDITOR: Mark Helfrich
COMPOSER: Christophe Beck

COMEDY/CRIME with elements of a thriller

Starring: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick, Stephen Henderson, Judd Hirsch, Téa Leoni, Michael Peña, Gabourey Sidibe, Nina Arianda, Marcia Jean Kurtz, and Juan Carlos Hernandez

Tower Heist is a 2011 crime comedy from director Brett Ratner (the Rush Hour franchise). The film follows the misadventures of a gang of working stiffs who plot to rob a Wall Street tycoon who stole their pensions. Tower Heist is a comic caper that lives up to the comedy part, and the film’s actors deliver on their characters, especially Eddie Murphy who returns to the kind of character that made him popular in the 1980s.

Tower Heist focuses on Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller), the building manager of The Tower, a high-rise luxury apartment complex in New York City’s Columbus Circle (Manhattan). The residents are wealthy and are used to being catered to, and the building’s security is no joke. Still, Josh has everything under control until the Tower’s most noteworthy tenant, wealthy businessman, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), is arrested by the FBI for running a Ponzi scheme. It was Kovacs who suggested that Shaw invest the Tower employees’ pension fund, and now that money is also apparently gone.

When FBI agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni) tells him that Shaw may get away with his crimes, Josh decides to get revenge on Shaw by breaking into his apartment to steal from him. He gathers fellow coworkers: his brother-in-law, Charlie Gibbs (Casey Affleck); a bankrupt Wall Street investor, Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick); bellhop Enrique Dev’reaux (Michael Peña), and Jamaican-born maid, Odessa Montero (Gabourey Sidibe) as his crew. Josh knows, however, that his crew needs a real criminal, so he recruits his neighbor, a petty crook named Slide (Eddie Murphy), to assist them in the robbery. But as determined as they are, things keep getting in their way.

Tower Heist is not really a heist film like the edgier The Italian Job (either version) or the cool and clever Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and its sequels. Tower Heist is comic fluff – successful comic fluff, but still fluff, and its concepts, ideas, and set pieces are utter fantasy. Things happen in this movie that are so unbelievable that they are often funny; it’s ridiculous stuff, but quite amusing.

The real treasures in Tower Heist are the actors and their characters. The story that is Tower Heist is Josh Kovacs’ story, and Ben Stiller, who has been a successful leading man in big screen comedies for well over a decade, is funny. However, Stiller gives the film a surprising dramatic heft by giving Kovacs a dark and melancholy side that simmers right alongside this movie’s humor – even if many viewers may not see it.

Eddie Murphy, in his role as Slide, has done what many critics (and some fans) have been demanding for over two decades – return to playing the wiseass who makes being rude, confrontational, and streetwise a gold standard. This kind of character, in one form or another, appeared in early Murphy films like 48 Hrs., Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop and at various time during Murphy’s tenure on “Saturday Night Live” (1980-84), yet in this film, that kind of character still seems fresh. The reason for this may be that Murphy plays Slide as a genuine criminal, a confrontational person who may appear comical, but who is actually an opportunistic career criminal and felon that is dangerous and untrustworthy. Slide is a real hood rat and is good for the film’s conflict and tension. He makes you believe that this heist has a better than 50% chance of going really bad.

There are other good supporting performances: Téa Leoni (who should have had a larger role), Matthew Broderick, and Alan Alda (who makes Arthur Shaw seem like a really nasty piece of work). I’ll also give credit for Tower Heist’s success as a comedy to both director Brett Ratner and editor Mark Helfrich. Ratner allows the actors room to play their characters for strong (if not maximum) effect. Helfrich composes a film that makes sure the comic moments are really funny and turns the heist sequence into a surprising thriller. I’d like to be a snob about this sometimes shallow and fluffy movie, but I really enjoyed Tower Heist. So why front?

7 of 10
A-

Sunday, November 06, 2011