Tastelessness is to Michael Bay as a brimming dumpster is to a gaze of famished raccoons: A sumptuous buffet, where society’s cultural refuse is received as a feast.
In his decades-long career, Bay hasn’t met a taboo he hasn’t at least considered poking with a clapboard. In Transformers: Age of Extinction, he takes a break from the titanic robot battles to have humans argue over Romeo and Juliet laws. He equipped a titanic robot with testicles in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. And in the true-crime-inspired comedy Pain and Gain, Bay had family-friendly actor Dwayne Johnson toss a pair of dismembered human hands on a BBQ grill in a darkly hilarious moment.
Yet these bonkers scenes pale in comparison to the whole of Bad Boys II. After 20 years, the 2003 sequel to Bay’s 1995 feature debut, Bad Boys, still towers above the rest of his filmography as his greatest monument to crass maximalist entertainment.
In this film, excess is a virtue and moderation is a mortal sin. Indeed, there’s nothing at all moderate about the production’s opening scene: Miami PD detectives Lieutenant Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) stand off against a confederacy of Ku Klux Kretins, who are expectantly waiting to buy some recreational narcotics.
The Klansmen take the officers’ presence unkindly, not the least because they’re Black and packing as much ammo as they are jabs for these bumpkin sons of America’s oldest hate group. "Casper, drop the bag," Mike barks at one heavily inked thug. A mere moment passes before a gunfight breaks out, peppered by racial epithets, Bay’s generous use of squibs, and a slow-mo shot of Marcus taking a bullet to the keister in comic agony.
"I can smell my ass burning," Marcus cries out.
Mike’s reassurances aren’t very reassuring: "I think it’s cool, man. It hit the meat. It ain’t nowhere near the hole."
Their bust on the Klan is itself a bust. To the Tactical Narcotics Team, dead white supremacists and two measly bags of drugs aren’t a reasonable “get” when Mike’s sources promised more. Marcus isn't happy. Mike is trigger-happy, hotheaded, and numb to the professional consequences of his reckless abandon. Marcus has three kids to consider and wonders whether partnering with Mike is worth the headache.
Frustrated after the Klan debacle, Marcus suffers an immediate crisis of conscience over his partnership with Mike while they continue investigating Miami’s illegal drug trade. This leads to further shootouts with the city’s criminal element and further confrontations with Mike — not least because he’s secretly dating Syd (Gabrielle Union), Marcus’ younger sister. Syd keeps her own secrets, like that she works for the DEA and she’s undercover, observing the enterprises of Cuban drug lord Johnny Tapia (Jordi Mollà). As Marcus and Mike try to figure out their stuff, their jobs take them closer to Tapia, Syd’s field operation, and new opportunities for wrecking up The Magic City as only characters in Bay’s movies can.
The ingrained formulation of Bay’s aesthetic is the same as iconic interior designer Iris Apfel’s: "More is more and less is a bore." But "more," to Bay, never seems enough. He approaches directing like he’s playing both sides of the board in a round of chess but with zero patience and infinitely more explosions.
Bad Boys II is structured around relentless action scenes competing with one another in a relay of escalating carnage. The opening scene’s execution is zany enough, complete with leap-and-fire heroics, lightning-fast cuts from a pistol report to a henchman’s bursting head, and a gas tank going up in flames after taking a couple of missed shots.
Very few filmmakers have Bay’s kineticism or appetite for havoc. When Bay stages Bad Boys II’s second stand-off, this time between Marcus, Mike, and a drug-trafficking Haitian gang called Zoe Pound, he outdoes the Klan sequence with a slick adaptation of his signature 360-degree "hero shot."
You know it if you’ve seen any Bay film ever. The camera operator spins around the subject, blocked in center frame, giving them the appearance of more than a man: a larger-than-life hero, worthy of awe and statues in their honor.
No matter the star, no matter the movie, the whole thing invariably looks cool as hell. As Marcus and Mike shoot at the gangsters in a rundown drug den, the camera loops around the wall separating the two parties. One smooth movement later, we’re watching the gangsters shoot at Marcus and Mike. Then the rotation continues, keeping the shot whole rather than inserting cuts; it's an original variation on Bay's trademark flashiness that keeps us involved in the action.
If the 360 is Bay’s signature, then smashing stylish and exorbitantly priced cars into each other is his compulsion. Guns are great. Firebirds are sublime. Making Firebirds go "boom" is a divine sacrifice for Bay. So, when the action moves onto the MacArthur Causeway, he’s effectively taking us all to heaven.
The Zoe Pounders wind up hijacking a transport truck and launching cars at Marcus, Mike, and Syd like Donkey Kong hucking barrels at Mario. It’s glorious. We’re told, later on, that all officers involved survived. But no one says a peep about motorists just going about their day, never considering for a minute that their commute might be disrupted by an exploding speedboat.
Yes: A speedboat. Why? This is Bay’s pattern: More, more, more. He’s already thrown cars. Might as well pass the time in Bad Boys II’s second car chase by throwing a stack of well-chilled cadavers out of a mortuary van and along the pavement. When the film arrives at its climax, Bay lays the shock and awe on thick: Piloting a stolen Hummer H2, Marcus and Mike level a busy favela, then stumble into a one-sided skirmish with the U.S. Navy.
Bay moves on to his favorite thing: the fireball. The opulent house that stands in for the ruthless Tapia’s drug-running headquarters was planned for demolition in real life before Bad Boys II’s production. Its owner, a spec-home builder, wanted to fast-forward renovations. Bay was happy to oblige, courtesy of Marcus and Mike. As for the kingpin himself? His inevitable demise feels like a precursor for the over-the-top kills of the Mortal Kombat video game series. It isn’t enough for Marcus to kill Tapia with a headshot; the kingpin’s lifeless carcass crumples to the ground and right on an active mine.
Tapia’s gruesome comeuppance reinforces extravagant mayhem as a core part of Bay’s filmmaking identity. For the director, there’s never a bad time for an operatic, gory death scene, and nothing in this world that can’t be improved by a fireball — including a swimming pool, as he illustrated in a comedic Verizon commercial, parodying his aesthetic. (Let it never be said Bay can’t laugh at himself.)
To look back on this explosive sequel, you can see where Bay's magic has inspired other movie makers. The Fast & Furious franchise, which began in 2001 with Rob Cohen and then featured helmers John Singleton, Justin Lin, James Wan, F. Gary Gray, David Leitch, and Louis Leterrier, has followed Bay's playbook by eclipsing each entry in exaggerated action. Zack Snyder embraced massive collateral damage with 2013’s Man of Steel, which became a staple in the expanding DCEU. But Bay is still the standard by which other action auteurs are judged.
It's wanton destruction just for the fun of it. Two decades on from its release, Bad Boys II epitomizes that philosophy best of all.
How to watch: Bad Boys II is now streaming on Prime Video.
