Bad Boys (1995 )
Bad Boys is a 1995 American buddy cop action comedy film directed by Michael Bay in his first feature directorial debut, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. The film stars Martin Lawrence and Will Smith as two Miami narcotics detectives, Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey. The film received mixed reviews from critics, and was commercially successful and gained a strong cult following. It spawned two sequels, Bad Boys II (2003), and Bad Boys for Life (2020).
Plot.
Lifelong friends Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey are Miami police detectives investigating $100 million of seized Mafia heroin, which was stolen from a secure police vault. Internal Affairs suspects that it was an inside job and threatens to shut down the entire department unless they recover the drugs within 72 hours. Mike asks one of his informants and ex-girlfriend Maxine “Max” Logan to look for people who are newly rich and therefore suspects. She gets herself and her best friend Julie Mott hired as escorts by Eddie Dominguez, a crooked former cop. The party is soon interrupted by Dominguez’s French drug kingpin boss Fouchet and his henchmen Casper, Ferguson, and Noah. Dominguez and Max are killed, while Julie manages to escape.RELATED:
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The madam who hired Julie and Max is disposed of by Noah, who then knocks out Mike as he investigates Max’s death.
Frantically calling the police station, Julie insists on talking only to Mike, who is away. Knowing she never met Mike, captain Conrad Howard forces Marcus to impersonate Mike to talk to her. At her apartment, Marcus and Julie are attacked by some of Fouchet’s henchmen, one of whom Marcus kills. When they rendezvous with Mike, Marcus and Mike have to impersonate each other, with Mike living at the Burnett residence while Marcus resides with Julie at Mike’s apartment. The two struggle to keep it up in Julie’s presence, and she quickly begins to suspect the truth.
Looking through mugshots, Julie identifies Noah as one of the henchmen.
The trio go to Club Hell, one of Noah’s known hangouts. After being spotted, Marcus knocks Casper unconscious during a bathroom fight. Julie tries to kill Fouchet but Marcus stops her. In the ensuing car chase, Mike kills Noah. The three manage to get away, but are caught on camera by a news helicopter and the report is later seen by Marcus’s family, who were told that Marcus was temporarily reassigned to Cleveland.
Mike and Marcus meet their old informant Jojo and learn about the location of the chemist who is cutting the stolen drugs. The three return to Mike’s apartment, where Marcus’ wife Theresa confronts them and confirms Julie’s suspicion they have been impersonating each other. Fouchet’s gang shows up and kidnaps Julie.
Production.
Principal photography began on June 27, 1994, at the Dade Tire company near downtown Miami, the city chosen to replace the original New York locale. Filming continued throughout the area, including South Beach’s Tides Hotel, the Mediterranean Biltmore Hotel, the Dade County Courthouse and a multimillion-dollar estate on a private island. The second floor of downtown Miami’s Alfred DuPont building was converted into a police station; a freighter on the Miami River into a drug lab. Bad Boys’ climactic scenes were filmed at the Opa-Locka Airport. Filming was quick due to the TV schedules of the stars with production wrapping on August 31. The opening sequence was written and shot during post-production. In the film’s early stages of development, Simpson and Bruckheimer initially envisioned Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz in the roles. When the film was written for Carvey and Lovitz, the original title for Bad Boys was Bulletproof Hearts. Arsenio Hall turned down the role of Lowrey and cites[citation needed] that choice as the worst mistake he has ever made.
Box office, Critical reception.
Bad Boys was commercially successful, grossing $141,407,024 worldwide — $65,807,024 in North America and $75,600,000 internationally. On Rotten Tomatoes Bad Boys has an approval rating of 42% based on reviews from 64 critics, with an average rating of 5.10/10. The site’s critical consensus reads: “Bad Boys stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have enjoyable chemistry; unfortunately, director Michael Bay too often drowns it out with set pieces and explosions in place of an actual story.” On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 41 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews”. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A” on an A+ to F scale. Most of the criticisms focused on the fact that despite the production of the film and the ability of the stars, the script did not diverge from the generic plot of a buddy-cop genre film, instead opting for repeated use of formulaic scenes.RELATED:
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Improvisation.
Director Bay did not like the script and often engaged Smith and Lawrence in discussions about how the dialogue and scenes could improve. He often allowed them to improvise while the cameras were rolling. He secretly told Smith to call Lawrence a bitch before the car scene. The whole “two bitches in the sea” was improvised, as was Lawrence’s comment when Leoni called him gay. The scene in the convenience store, when the clerk puts a gun to Burnett and Lowrey’s heads and yells, telling them to “Freeze, mother bitches!”, is also improvised. They came up with: “No, you freeze, bitch! Now back up, put the gun down and get me a pack of Tropical Fruit Bubbalicious”.
“And some Skittles.” According to Bay in the DVD commentary, at the end of the film when Mike and Marcus are recuperating, Mike says “I love you, man.” Bay claims that Smith refused to say the line, causing the director and actor to argue back and forth over the line. Bay wanted Smith to say the line as he felt it summed up the friendship between the cops. After their argument had lasted for half of the day’s shoot and much of the crew was ready to pack up, a fed up Bay told Smith to do whatever he wanted, after which Smith changed his mind and agreed to say the line.
Cast:
- Martin Lawrence as Detective  Marcus
- Will Smith as Detective  Michael Eugene
- Téa Leoni as Julie Mott
- Tchéky Karyo as Fouchet
- Theresa Randle as Theresa Burnett
- Joe Pantoliano as Captain Conrad Howard
- Marg Helgenberger as Captain Alison
- Nestor Serrano as Detective Sanchez
- Julio Oscar Mechoso as Detective Ruiz
- Saverio Guerra as Chet
- Anna Thompson as Francine
- Kevin Corrigan as Elliot
- Michael Imperioli as Joe “Jo-Jo”
- Vic Manni as Ferguson
- Frank John Hughes as Casper
- Ralph Gonzales as Kuni
- Marc Macaulay as Noah Trafficante
- Emmanuel Xuereb as Eddie Dominguez
- John Salley as Fletcher (credited as Hacker “Fletcher”)
- Karen Alexander as Max Logan
- Shaun Toub as Store Clerk
- Kim Coates as White Carjacker
- Michael ‘Bear’ Taliferro as Black Carjacker
- Lisa Boyle as Girl Decoy
- Ed Amatrudo as Ether Van Boss