Bad Boys (1995)

I suppose one way of summarising this film is "two African-American comedians make an action film." Following in the footsteps of Eddie Murphy and his highly successful Beverly Hills Cop series of films, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence team up to lay down the law with a combination of fast paced action and witty dialogue.

Our two intrepid heroes, Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence), are narcotics detectives with the Miami Police Department, and have four days to recover 100 million dollars worth of heroin, stolen from the evidence lockup at the station in a very professional operation, before Internal Affairs shuts them down. The only lead they have to finding the perpertrators is Julie Mott (Téa Leoni) who witnessed the murder of her best friend Maxine, who was also a close friend of Mike. Julie calls the police, but will only speak to Mike, who is currently unavailable, and so Marcus is forced to pretend to be Mike to gain Julie's assistance.

The three then track down the criminals while the two boys try to continue their flimsy efforts at hiding their true identities for the sake of their witness. As is inevitable in this style of film, their ruse comes crashing down on their heads, they catch the bad guys, and everyone lives happily ever after.

From a technical view point, this film gives the impression that a lot of care was taken in how each scene would look, with a lot of attention to the coloring - the police station is very subdued, mostly grays and blues, with the outdoor scenes being very bright and vibrant. This detail shows up very well on the disc, and really adds to the mood of the location.

No glaring problems of which to report, though I did think that some of the edges seemed a little too sharp - mostly on clothing, and other things that should look "soft".

Dialogue was clear throughout the film, but although I had it running in Dolby 5.1 I didn't really notice the use of the surrounds, even though there were several gun battles that would have provided ample opportunity. Maybe they were just quiet... Your sub, however, will get a workout, though perhaps more subdued than your average action flicks with "big-badda-boom"s.

Let's see what we get:

• US Theatrical trailer - full frame, Pro Logic, and a bit grainy. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary here. Having just finished watching the film before the trailer, I'm sure that there's a scene in the trailer (involving Will Smith and a woman in the shower) that was not in the film.
  
• Two music videoss - Shy Guy by Diana King and So Many Ways by Warren G. Both include video footage from the film, although it looks as though the footage used in In So Many Ways has gone through the washing machine a few times. Shy Guy also includes footage of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence getting up to "zany antics"(tm).
  
• Featurette - the usual run-of-the-mill, film footage intercut with interviews with the principal cast and crew. Nothing here particularly worth writing home about.
  
• Filmographies of the three stars.

An entertaining film, with a nicely done disc. It's not one of the great action flicks around, but it is good enough to stand up to repeated viewings. It'll be interesting to see what they do with the sequel, planned for next year.