7 / 10
Bad Boys is the buddy cop franchise that defined Miami action cinema for three decades. Michael Bay directed the first two films. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah directed the third and fourth. Will Smith plays Mike Lowrey. Martin Lawrence plays Marcus Burnett. Both are Miami narcotics detectives. The franchise grossed approximately one and a half billion dollars worldwide across four films. The films are structurally similar: stolen drugs, escalating shootouts, comedic friction between the two leads, and an ending in which the leads survive against the odds.
The first film established Michael Bay’s visual signature. The second was where that signature became the most extreme version of itself. The third and fourth films, made twenty years later by different directors, returned the franchise to viable mainstream entertainment after Bay had moved on. The franchise’s evolution across thirty years is one of the more interesting case studies in how action cinema has changed.
The First Film
Bad Boys (1995) was Michael Bay’s feature debut. Bay had been a commercial and music video director before this. The film made approximately one hundred and forty-one million dollars worldwide on a nineteen million dollar budget. It was the launchpad for both Bay’s career as an action director and Will Smith’s transition from television (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) into film leading-man status. Martin Lawrence was already a star from his stand-up career and the Martin sitcom.
The film is leaner than its sequels. The action is well-staged. The comedy works. The plot involves stolen heroin and the murder of a confidential informant. The setup is clean. The execution is energetic. Bay’s visual signature is present but not yet excessive. The two leads have specific chemistry that the script lets them exercise across long sequences of professional friction.
For Writers
A debut feature often has a quality that subsequent work loses. The director hasn’t yet developed bad habits. The performers haven’t yet been told they’re stars. The result is sometimes the strongest version of what the franchise will become. The lesson is that early work in any creator’s career can have a discipline that later work, freed from constraints, loses. The constraints are part of why early work often lands.
Bad Boys II
Bad Boys II (2003) is the maximalist version of the franchise. Bay had directed Armageddon and Pearl Harbor in the intervening years and arrived at the sequel with substantially more resources and less restraint. The film runs two hours and twenty-seven minutes. The action sequences include a freeway chase involving falling cars from a transporter, a Cuban mansion assault, and a body bag at a morgue that becomes the most-quoted scene in the franchise.
The film made approximately two hundred and seventy-three million dollars worldwide on a one hundred and thirty million dollar budget. It’s the most divisive entry. Some viewers consider it the franchise high point. Others consider it the moment Bay’s excess overwhelmed the material. Both readings are defensible. The film is what it is. The audience either accepts it or doesn’t.
For Writers
Excess can be a creative strategy when the audience knows what they’re buying. Bad Boys II is more of what Bad Boys was. The audience that wanted more of what the first film did got more. The audience that wanted a more controlled version of the franchise was disappointed. The lesson is that knowing which audience you’re serving is more important than serving every audience. Maximalist work has its audience. Restraint has its audience. Pick one.
The 2020 Reboot
Bad Boys for Life (2020) returned the franchise after a seventeen-year gap. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, Belgian directors who hadn’t previously made major American films, were brought in. The film recalibrated the franchise tonally. The leads are older. The action is more grounded. Mike Lowrey is dealing with the consequences of his past. The film engages with themes the earlier entries hadn’t bothered with, including the actual moral weight of being a violent cop.
The film made approximately four hundred and twenty-six million dollars worldwide on a ninety million dollar budget. It was a major commercial success and one of the last big theatrical hits before the pandemic. The fourth film, Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024), continued the same directors’ approach and made approximately four hundred and four million worldwide. The recalibration worked. The franchise survived its director transition.
For Writers
A long-running franchise can survive a creative recalibration if the new approach honors what worked while addressing what stopped working. The 2020 Bad Boys reboot didn’t pretend the previous films hadn’t existed. It also didn’t try to reproduce them. The lesson is that legacy properties benefit from honest engagement with their own history. Pretending the older work was perfect is dishonest. Pretending it never happened is also dishonest. Acknowledge what was good and what wasn’t, and build from there.
Craft Note
Michael Bay’s 1995 Cuban-warehouse standoff established the franchise’s visual signature: a sustained 360-degree spin around Smith and Lawrence with backlit smoke, anamorphic flares, and orange-blue Miami color separation. The technique has been imitated for thirty years. The original sequence demonstrates how a director’s signature shot can carry a franchise across cast changes, sequels, and tonal shifts. The Bay rotation is the property’s most-copied piece of craft.
Is Bad Boys worth watching?
7/10 average across the franchise. The first is a 7. The second is a 6 or 8 depending on your tolerance for Bay excess. The third is an 8 (most viewers’ favorite of the modern entries). The fourth is a 7. Watch the first. Watch the third. The second and fourth are optional based on appetite.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Craft Behind It
This film appears on 3 of my film lists