If there is one thing that seems to be an easy sale these days, it is throwing a sequel to an older series from the 90s or early 2000s. Some should be left as a relic of their time, I am looking at you Dumb and Dumber To. Others somehow seem to be the perfect sequel, and Bad Boys For Life is definitely the latter.
Bad Boys For Life has an older Mike and Marcus, with Marcus gearing up for his retirement. Obviously we know that Will Smith is in insane shape, and Mike still has his high energy from the first two movies who doesn’t see retirement in his future. After some high profile killings by a hit man, Mike is the next one to receive a bullet.
After recovering from his wounds Mike finds that Marcus has locked in his retirement. This leads to the characters having one of their classic arguments. After some time they embark on their classic odd couple partnership to find the assassin and the person pulling the strings from Mexico.
One strength of the movie is that the actors have kept up with their characters. We find Will Smith still being high energy and Martin Lawrence being a little slower in his age. This lines up with their characters perfectly which helps enforce the movie’s setting.
Added to this are the excellent antagonists played by Jacob Scipio and Kate del Castillo. Jacob is an unnervingly good constant threat in the movie with some morality aspects that keep you interested and Kate is an excellent master that controls the situation. The wider team that Mike and Marcus work with throw some interesting personalities in the mix that gives much needed character diversity.
The Blu Ray comes with a decent selection of behind the scenes features which includes how they went about tackling a third movie and some alternative scenes. The best feature here is of course the bloopers. Funny people like Martin Lawrence and Will Smith always make for a hilarious blooper reel.
Bad Boys For Life is a worthy sequel to the old action flicks. The excellent action is well balanced with some classic humour and a lot of new characters to make the whole thing as new as it is old.