Bad Boys II (2003)

BAD BOYS II (2003) 1 star out of 4. Starring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jordi Molla, Gabrielle Union, Peter Stormare, Theresa Randle and Joe Pantoliano. Story by Marianne Wibberley and Cormac Wibberley and Ron Shelton. Screenplay by Ron Shelton and Jerry Stahl. Directed by Michael Bay. Rated R. Runnng time: 150 minutes.

 Bad boys, bad boys
 What'ca tryin' to do?
 You made a lousy sequel
 That reeks like No. 2

After viewing Bad Boys II I think the II in the title stands for II long, II loud, II dumb and II bad.

Bad Boys II exists more as an excuse to commit highway mayhem than make a movie.

Filmmaker Michael Bay is more traffic cop than director as he wrecks half the vehicles in the city of Miami through a series of repetitious chases through streets and byways.

Give Bay credit though. The movie is flashy and stylized. But that's merely a facade to camouflage an empty vessel bereft of originality.

This multimillion dollar cops-and-robbers shoot-'em-up pits tough cop partners Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) against a ruthless drug kingpin attempting to corner the market on ecstasy.

Also involved are Haitian gangtas, Russian mobsters, an undercover DEA agent (Gabrielle Union), who not only is Marcus' baby sister, but is romantically involved with Mike.

No cliché is overlooked, from the frazzled and overwrought police captain (a very blustery Joe Pantoliano) to the now familiar bullet-time camera shots of a projectile blasted from the barrel of a gun.

More ammunition is expended in this film than was fired during the past several months in Iraq.

And since most of the film's budget went for its arsenal and automobiles, it did not leave any money to hone the script, which was based on a story by Marianne Wibberley and Cormac Wibberley, two of the writers for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, and Ron Shelton, who was one of the writers of Hollywood Homicide.

Shelton who co-wrote the screenplay with Jerry Stahl, either tossed in ideas he rejected for Hollywood Homicide or that recent failure was comprised of the leavings from the Bad Boy II script.

Either way, Bad Boys II has little to offer. Even the banter between Smith and Lawrence grows tiresome. The movie is 2 1/2 hours of dead air. Or to borrow from MacBeth it's an endeavor full of sound and fury that signifies nothing.

Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bbloom@journalandcourier.com or at bobbloom@iquest.net. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at www.jconline.com by clicking on movies. Bloom's reviews also appear on the Web at the Rottentomatoes Web site, www.rottentomatoes.com and at the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom

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X-RT-RatingText: 1/4