We have another entry into the sea of reboots and sequels of long-forgotten movie franchises. If this trend continues I need everyone involved to watch Bad Boys for Life and take notes.  The 1995 Bad Boys film was a buddy cop action comedy with gunfights, car chases and things exploding. Bad Boys for Life, releasing Friday, January 17^th, is a buddy cop action comedy with gunfights, car chases and things exploding.  This movie is exactly what you expect it to be.

Seventeen years after their last outing, the more things change the more they stay the same, as we go back to Miami and catch up with Detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett. Mike is still single and flashy while his nervous family orientated partner Marcus is ready for retirement. Someone has put a ‘hit’ out on Detective Lowrey, so the team investigates to find out who and why.  It’s difficult for me to write much more than that without spoiling anything in the movie.

The chemistry and timing between leads Smith and Lawrence still works as it did when we first met Mike and Marcus 25 years ago. They both easily slipped back into their onscreen personas. Joining them are several members of the original cast, including Marcus’ wife Theresa and daughter Megan as well as Captain Howard.  The new additions to the cast are Rita, Dorn  Kelly and Rafe as the members a new tech squad of the Miami PD.  I really enjoyed that the women in this film are not window dressing and instead are down to jump into a fight.

Written by Chris Bremner, Peter Craig, Joe Carnahan, and George Gallo and directed by Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah, this team created a very tight 2-hour movie.  Not one minute in this film is wasted. There is an actual storyline behind the action and my only issue is that this installment is gorier than the previous films.

I’ll admit I was concerned with the fact that this movie is releasing in January, the movie dumping month, so my expectations were lowered, just a little.  I was happily surprised; this is a very good movie and pays homage to the prior two films. Also, there is a cameo that made me laugh out loud. This film is worth catching in the theatre.

4 sports cars out of 5