Review: Bad Boys For Life

Bad Boys For Life
Cert: 15 / 124 mins / Dir. Bilall Fallah & Adil El Arbi / Trailer

Mea culpa. When I intimated that Michael Winterbottom's Greed was the most self-indulgent mess to land in cinemas for some time, I hadn't considered Bad Boys For Life playing in the screen next door. Coming slightly late to this party, I find myself relieved that at least I didn't rush.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence bellow their way through a script comprising almost entirely of short words and written by an excitable fifteen yr-old, where exposition and lensflare play such prominent roles that their names should really be on the poster. This tale of retirement, revenge and relentless slow-motion would be incoherent if it wasn't so painfully linear. It plays like a contractual obligation sequel, except that wouldn't explain the seventeen year gap between installments.

But this isn't your standard 'grumpy old men wink into the camera while making jokes about having a bad hip' jaunt (although it is that, too). Oh no my friend, this film's got a USB drive in it while Uber and 4Chan get verbally name-checked, so you know this is for The Kids. It's not so much a callback to the glory days of the action genre, more a cobbled together greatest hits reel of explosions, gunfire and everyone in the cast getting a turn to go wide-eyed and shout "Oh hell no!".

The film settles down a bit after an hour or so, but only in the way that you know by then it's going to be around half an hour too long. Bad Boys For Lite feels like getting the band back together purely to jam old songs in the garage. Great if you're in the band, not so much for everyone expecting to see a show. And I must confess that I'm not a connoisseur of Mr Martin Lawrence's screen work, but his underperforming here makes Will Smith seem sincere. Lawrence looks like he's having a stroke for a lot of the movie, is that normal?

In the film's favour, I can at least say that:
✔ It's brightly coloured
✔ It's energetic
✔ Somebody gets killed with a forklift

I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy Bad Boys For Life, and good for them. In my defence I missed about a third of the movie because I was rolling my eyes so hard all I could see was the inside of my head.

Judging by the way the film fetishises it own franchise, I imagine it's very similar to the first two Bad Boys outings*¹.



For a lot of people, apparently so.



Nope.



Nope.



Yep.



I have no idea.
The last forty minutes of the movie is basically a blanket of white noise.



Level 2: Will Smith is in this, and he was in that Collateral Beauty with Keira 'Sabé' Knightley.





*¹ For clarity, I have actually seen the first two movies in this series around their time of original release, and I remember literally nothing about them. Under the normal run of things I'd have had a refresher evening before going to see this third installment, but in all honesty I suspect that would have just put me off the prospect altogether. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Memento

Memento (2000)
Cert: 15 / 113 mins / Dir. Christopher Nolan / Trailer



You see, this is exactly why I started this season of movies. So that I can watch brilliant, classic films for the first time and gush about them while you look at me with a blank face and say "…well, yes. We've been telling you that for years."

Director Christopher Nolan's 2000 thriller (adapted from a story written by his brother, Jonathan) stars Guy Pearce as a man with Anterograde Amnesia - a brain unable to form new memories after a traumatic incident - attempting to hunt down his wife's murderer by leaving messages and clues in the form of notes he'll find and tattoos on his body. The film comprises of two sequences; a black and white chain of events which occurs 'forwards', interspersed with the colour chain of events told in regressive steps until the two meet at the film's climax. Sound confusing? Good, it's meant to be. Memento starts as being fascinating, becomes infuriating, then finishes by morphing into brilliance.

On par with the Nolan's Inception for innovation and sheer narrative force, Memento rewards the concentration of its audience without patronising them, and its writing and direction are matched beat for beat by Wally Pfister's dreamlike cinematography and Pearce's candid performance as the memory-vacuum, Leonard.

Another viewing is now required, of course, and I suspect several/many more after that. Fans of varied typography will also appreciate some of Leonard's informational tattoos (although I can't imagine he did many of the serif-faces himself with a pin and a biro, somehow?)

I haven't. Guy Pearce wasn't always irking hardcore fanboys as The Mandarin, and there was once a time when one did not simply go and see a film with Mike From Out Of Neighbours in it…



I am.



I would.



There's not.



Oh, Guy Pearce starred in Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert alongside Terence 'Chancellor Valorum' Stamp.







DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.