Movie Review: Bad Boys For Life

If you haven’t heard yet, Will Smith is attempting to rekindle his career in action movies. The box office success of the 1995 film “Bad Boys” has sparked two sequels. In 95’ the movie was welcomed with open arms with its signature song and the massive popularity of the main stars, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. This movie helped to propel the career of Micheal Bay as a box office master of action and, what my dad calls “shoot em up” movies. By today's standards, the film didn’t make that much money, but by 1995 standards it was a smash hit making an estimated 140 million on a 90 million dollar budget. Bad Boys II came out in 2003 and cost almost 130 million to make and took in 273 million. Again, delivering on the promise of the first movie and, well, winning.

When Bad Boys premiered, the Miami lifestyle still had some “Miami Vice” reverberations and people were ready to see that vibe portrayed again. With audiences flocking to the other hits of the year like “12 Monkeys”, “Nixon” and the still-relevant “Seven”, we were all in the mood for a light-hearted action flick reminiscent of “Lethal Weapon.” Transferring the theme song from the hit TV reality show “COPS” didn’t hurt either. This movie didn’t let the theater-going audiences down as it delivered a healthy dose of camp, action, jokes, and star-power. I enjoyed the movie so much at the time that I bought it (there was no streaming then) and the soundtrack too. Although I found it “meth-lab” trailer park to play the theme song so I stuck to the other tracks when there was a possibility of someone eavesdropping on my musical choices. Bad Boys II might be considered a better film, and it made just as many people happy as the first, myself included

And now, in 2020, “Bad Boys For Life” has made itself known. For what, I am not entirely sure, but it might not be something good. It is playing on the same tropes as the past two movies with all the throw-back lines and situations. Nothing in the film was new and there is no twist ending.

CAUTION, SPOILERS AHEAD

---

The movie is almost a repeat of Bad Boys II when it comes to the interpersonal relationship between Smith and Lawrence. Sure they forwarded the story a touch with Lawerence’s family but nothing has changed between them and Smith is still unresolved as a character. In fact, I would suggest that neither character has any real movement and leave the movie as they came in, stagnant from the previous two films

The biggest issue I have with the film is that it resembles an 80’s or 90’s action flick a little too much. Most of the scenes were made fun of in one of my favorite movies “Last Action Hero.” In the film, they bring all the stupid things screenwriters do to make an action movie move forward without getting too much into the details when they have run out of things to blow up or minions to kill. In fact, much of the movie has those nameless, faceless villains wearing motorcycle helmets riding motorcycles and driving chase cars with heavily tinted windows. Our heroes can kill as many of them as they want and no one worries about the body count because they are bad guys after all. This movie even goes so far as to have them chewed out by their police captain who yells and screams like a little baby about how much these two guys wreak havoc on the city. Even after the blistering attack from the boss, the hero gets a new team with abilities unknown to Smith. But, we find out that the team is good, but they don’t have what it takes to be a real old school cop like Smith and Lawrence so they flounder.

Then there are the unnecessary and unreal explosions and weaponry. Cars do not blow up when they are shot with a rifle round, motorcycles cannot roam around the city with a military machine gun attached to the front of a motorcycle sidecar and grenades do not have enough force to push a motorcycle onto its front wheel. But this is the movies, so I may just let most of this stuff go. Ok, I won’t. It is just too ridiculous.

But there’s more.

In my humble opinion, when a screenwriter gets stuck or can’t see beyond their own creations eyes they do dumb things. Just like in the film “Batman VS Superman,” the duo is miraculously saved at the end of the movie when the team they left behind in Miami suddenly appears to give the crucial assist. This is amateurish and Smith and Lawerence should have been able to figure this out by themselves. It would have been a way better ending.

Instead, the screenwriters wrote themselves into a corner by having fifteen or so bad guys attack the guys in Miami. The rule of thumb for writing a screenplay is to make the next set of bad guys tougher than the last. Well, the only way they could do that is to double up on the number of bad guys since there was no set up for a supervillain henchman as that role was taken by the sub-plot of the super henchman being Will Smiths son. Yes, you heard me right, he had a child with the main bad girl. Explained to us in a reflective scene, we find that Will’s first assignment out of the academy was to be an undercover operative in a Mexican cartel. Just Another overused trope that this movie intends to cram down our throats in an unsuccessful attempt to make the audience care for the Characters that fails miserably.

Top all of that off with the Super Henchman (AKA Will’s son) is captured after turning on his mother and given a second chance to prove his worthiness even after killing the police captain, everyone’s dear friend, in cold blood just thirty minutes before. I mean Come On!

While I could go on and on about this film, I wonder if it will find an audience that revels in its creation. The world has changed and sensibilities have deepened. Can a 1908’s style buddy cop flick hold it’s own? If so, I can write that. And it would probably be better than this 1.5-star silly movie. Mostly because I always try to avoid cliché’s when writing a story. This movie leaves me wondering if our society has digressed to the point that a good story isn’t as crucial as making stuff blow up. The box office take for this movie will tell us and I hope it’s not bad news.

1917, Every tool a Plot driven Screenwriter can muster.

I watch a lot of movies. Most of them aren’t very good. Most of them are trying to be modern in their cinematic qualities and the stories have all the little things in them that the screenwriting books tell us must be included. They always add in the save the cat moments to make our hero seem likable. They have the sex at sixty or the love scene comes about the sixty-minute/page mark. When the hero finds himself in a position that feels impassable and all is lost, that is a screenwriting trope. The list goes on and on and sometimes it isn’t actually a good thing to see that every one of them is in the movie. Usually, that means it was written by someone that has lost their way when it comes to telling a good story.

I am going into massive spoilers with this blog about the movie “1917”, you have been warned.

---

The movie is doing well with nominations this year. It is a good movie. However, it isn’t a great movie. The story is all about the plot and not about the characters. In fact, it must be noted that the main character isn’t who we think is it. The character we begin following is killed in the first half of the film. The other character, George MacKay as Lance Corporal Schofield, is quiet and argumentative. Schofield (MacKay) is not empathetic and really is overshadowed by Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Blake) until his death at the hands of a German Bi-Plane Pilot.

Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Blake)

Blake (Chapman) begins the film by volunteering his friend for a special project. Schofield has seen up-close combat, supposedly, and his friend has not. Given the task of getting orders from the General to the front lines to fall back and call off a misguided attack by Col. Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) as the Germans fall back to a more substantial position to ambush the entire section of the British Army. To do so, they must pass through “no man's land,” the abandoned fortifications of the Germans, and weed their way through dastardly non-descript German soldiers who have no other reason to exist than to kill whoever is dressed as a soldier playing for the opposite team. And that’s about it for the story, plot and anything else that you can think of.

I am not saying that the story isn’t right. It is a good story and you are on the edge of your seat at the beginning. Every scene has the pre-requisite amount of tension and all the boxes are checked. That is unless you have a yearning for characters who do things that have nothing to do with the plot but everything to do with the story, like me.

I will concede, after watching an interview with the Director/Writer Sam Mendes, this was completely intentional. He stated that he kept the characters obtuse and unfleshed out to keep the tension up. I agree that it worked but in the end, I was left with nothing. Maybe that’s the point? Perhaps it is his way of commenting on what war can be and what it takes from individuals to be executed correctly. I can see the point and it does make a statement. But, sometimes, the statement you want to make, or the theme you want to get across, shouldn’t be the only reason for the story. Not saying that was his “theme” and it is more of an observation on directing in general, I would suppose.

The movie is shot exceptionally well. I enjoyed ninety-five percent of the shots and set up. I especially love the one-shot, one-take way they did most of the film. It is very compelling and demands respect as it’s the most technically challenging thing to film. I thought they had to be using a boom or crane on a vehicle to get the shots of the two men going down into craters that must have been twelve to fifteen feet deep without having any camera shake, and they did exactly that. Pretty cool if you ask me.

I found most of the sets believable except for the number of dead bodies lying and floating around. In those days they would call front line cease-fires for Collecting the dead and wounded. Chivalry was something that all the armies followed, for the most part. The dead loitering everywhere is really an embellishment of the director to horrify the viewer. Other intricacies of the film can be called into question, I suppose, but they really aren’t anything that takes away from the film itself.

What does take away from the film is the number of writing tropes they threw into it. Since it doesn’t actually tell a real story and just shows you the plot with no character growth from anyone on screen, I suppose the more mechanisms it can put into place, the better.

The first, and most apparent, mechanism this movie uses (well, not that obvious since it happens in the second act instead of the first) is the reluctant hero. Our main man Schofield (MacKay) tries to get Blake (Chapman) to wait until dark before heading out on their mission. He beleaguers the point, over and over again, until they top the trench and begin their trek. Then he tries to stall his friend and hapless leader when they find some rations left behind by the Germans. Of course, this is a trap meant to bottleneck the invading soldiers so they will get caught in a tunnel collapse when they gather to eat. Our hero, who we have yet to discover is the hero, barely escapes while his cohort is none the less for wear.

Not to let the point go, the screenplay then has Schofield ask why Blake choose him and not someone else. In retrospect, as I sit here typing, this is the most exposition of the entire film. Then, it goes away and never comes back.

---

At one point in the film, I almost fell asleep. No, really. I was so bored with what I was watching; it took everything I had to keep from snoring in the theater. Schofield, now on his own to complete the mission, has come to the town just outside the forest where the Colonel is preparing for the imperiled attack our hero has been charged with stopping. He is chased by a random darkly shrouded German Soldier into a small room with a fire burning. Schofield has managed to evade the German but finds himself presented with a pretty young French woman who has hidden there with a child. Schofield questions the woman and, in broken English accompanied by subtitles tells him that the child isn’t hers and that she randomly just found the fat baby (that isn’t an exaggeration, this baby is HUGE). He has a moment with her and then leaves to complete his mission.

This entire scene is something that I would have thrown out of my own movie as it has nothing to do with anything. Just an attempt at character building in a way that is utterly useless to the narrative we are watching. If you cut this entire scene from the movie, you have lost nothing. It is there because of the trope and mechanical tool that is called “sex at sixty.” It does nothing for our character and nothing for our movie. It also what clued me in to what the screenwriter was doing to make this story work. Then all the bells went off and I knew what, why and where everything happened as well as what to expect next. Essentially the movie ended for me during that scene and explained why I was trying not to saw an entire forest of knotted pine from my seat or at least sound like I was.

Overall, 1917 is a good film. Where it lacks in character everything, it makes up for in its artistry. The dialogue doesn’t miscarry and the characters seem mostly true; Schofield even has a mentor during one scene. The setting is bleak, as it should be and the war is represented in a mostly accurate way. The performances are strong. Albeit why wouldn’t they be when there is little dialogue once Lance Corporal Blake is killed.

Does it deserve Oscars for acting? I would bet there are better performances this year. Should it be given an award for the best screenplay? An absolute no. Cinematography, Most definitely.

Review of Thor Ragnarok

I finally gave in and went to see the heralded Thor Ragnarok last night.  I did not want to see it, really, but many of the screenwriting podcasts I have been listening to, like The Curious about Screenwriting Podcast, seem to love the story. While I felt it had some relative fun aspects to the movie, I did not feel that it left me wanting to see more or other films.

The story structure seems sound, its flow was not interrupted with randomness or unnecessary scenes that failed to complete the mission of furthering the story. It did have redeeming character traits that made the characters somewhat likable and, on the first watch, the story seemed succinct. That did not spur my imagination and left me with a feeling of emptiness when leaving the theater. It was not a bad movie, and it did everything right in the way that movies are doing them today, but it didn't do what I want a movie to do and create a lasting impression upon my psyche that I can carry with me on my travels through my own life.

I do have to applaud the movie for trying to stay true to its roots in the 1970s, 1980's motif that the first one had with its cheesy subtitles and crummy music but even that left me rolling my eyes because of the recent phenomena of the Netflix Stranger Things. It actually cheapened it for me because I hate pandering, especially in a film where the movie has to hold its own for the sake of itself. Even though, I must admit that no movie seems to do that these days. A practice that I believe should still be first and foremost in the minds of the creators of any film yet has seemed to fall out of favor. 

The film opens with Thor being trapped by a Devil looking creature that makes no literal sense to anyone like myself... but there is a reason for the creature as it is blatantly and needed for the movie to have an ending. Unfortunately for this film, I knew exactly what this character's purpose was at about three minutes in. Ultimately telling me the conclusion of the movie and leaving no suspense or tension to make me WANT to keep watching. Then it did it again and again... Every new character that was introduced strengthened my guess and eventually left me with two hours of my time taken from me while draining my pockets of the money it took to purchase the ticket. At the end of the film, I found myself ultimately disappointed in the plot and story because at no point did anything task my senses or make me second guess the ending that was already completed in my mind. In fact, the only other movie that was more blatant about its end at the very beginning was a terrible film that had so much potential but the worst story ever called "The Others" starring Nichole Kidman. This movie is about a mother and her children who are haunted by ghosts, but it turns out that they are actually the ghosts. Something that was very thinly veiled at the beginning leaving nothing to the imagination and thus ruining the story.

One thing that immediately set off my alarms is when Thor losses his hammer just shortly after his father dies.  The only recourse for the character is to take the throne from the bad, bad lady in the Maleficent outfit and kill her with the thing holding Thor prisoner at the beginning of the movie. I mean they didn't even try. The fact that her horns and the horns of what could be mistaken as the devil from "Pick of Destiny" look exactly the same are just some of the dead giveaways. Needless to say, any entertainment value from this movie could only come from the crude and silly jokes, insider trading of the Avengers prior films and fighting. None of which actually advance the story or make any sort of coherent point that might stimulate anyone other than fanboys who would watch any Marvel movie with exuberance just because it is a Marvel movie, regardless of its content or quality.

I tried to enjoy the movie, I honestly did. The laments of Thor as he tries to be cool but just isn't are humorous and usually might make him more human but fail miserably and only serve to throw us out of the film and remind us that we are in a theater and not somewhere else. Then there is the CGI. It is supposed to be, but it looks horrendous. None of the places looked real to me at any point other than the short scene on earth where they are talking to their father. Everything else was half baked and cheap. I know what it takes to make stuff in computer land look real and have done it myself, and I assure you, it could have been done much better for an extra couple of hours worth of work. Not only do the locations look very fake and seem to make us want to believe that outer space exists in the land of Roger Rabbit all of the animated characters look equally bad. At no point did I ever believe Hulk was in the same room as Thor and not just some cartoon skillfully drawn but poorly colored.

I would say this movie is worth a watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime, but that is about as far as I would go. It isn't a terrible movie, but it's not that great either. Films should challenge us, make us want to be right next to the character on the screen and endear themselves into our psyche when we are done watching them. Genuine cinematic gold must contain something of lasting value that stays with you. Thor, Ragnarok doesn't even come close to doing this on any level, and it is a waste of time. If you want pure entertainment for the sake of entertainment, watch something else because this doesn't even accomplish that. Terminator 2 is better at just tantalizing your brain, probably because it's endearing and leaves you different than you were before you saw it the first time. Something this movie and most of its contemporaries fail to do.