 Movie Review Contains Spoilers
DETROIT - The new film "Bad Boys For Life 3" is out on the big screen. It has been making box office history with $400 million Worldwide. Bad Boys is directed by Belgian directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. It is a violent ride of explosions, fast Porsches, and the Miami skyline. There is plenty of visual eye candy and fancy guns over the top situations. This film review will be untypical for me and I will keep it short.
The plot starts with Isabel Aretas, who is the widow of drug cartel kingpin Benito, escapes from a Mexican prison with the help of her criminal son Armando. Isabel then sends Armando to Miami Beach on a mission rooted in revenge. He is asked to recover an abundant amount of stash of money his father Benito had hidden, as well as kill all of the people responsible for his father's conviction in prison and eventual death. Isabel requires that Armando kill Miami detective Mike Lowrey, (played by Will Smith) last. That is all the plot you need to know.
The rest of the 2 hours and 4 minutes is filled with a twisting turning plot that confuses, bewilders and oddly entertains. The action takes place on South Beach Ocean Drive, (like Scarface and so many other films) and I found this distracting. I have stayed in the Colony Hotel and hung out in that part of SOBE and it is uneventful. This is when I started to mentally drift off and notice subtle things about the film like the strong emotional bond between mother and son. Isabel, (played by Kate del Castillo) and her obedient Mexican son. I come from a Mexican background and found it odd to see this Hollywood stereotype of this deep emotional commitment to family. It almost felt Sicilian. This evil woman is committed to killing all of these people for what they did to her husband many years ago. Then we find out that Armando is the son of Will Smith, thus explaining why she wants him dead?
Growing up I have seen Mexican fathers split and women remarry 2, 3, 5 times. Seeing this type of commitment that takes decades to prepare unfold was kind of confusing. I have never seen this kind of commitment in our culture ever. This is what made the experience for me so distracting and I found the overacting on mother and son to be a parody of itself. I got to say I was offended in the sense that people take this so seriously and believe this is how committed we are to one another. The rest of the film is a nightmare and it involves Isabel assisting her insane son trying to kill Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in some old building with a stained glass ceiling. The building catches on fire after much gunfire and then a helicopter gets hurled through the ceiling in an attempt to bring the film to a climax. And that's visually great but at this point, I don't care about any of these people.
This was a great mind eraser movie and it will help you forget about the B.S. in your life for two hours. Sometimes its good to just get out of the house but it will be mind-numbing to sit there with a scorecard and try to figure out who betrayed who and connect the dots. Armando, (played by Jacob Muntaz Scipio) has no emotions and it hard to gather up any kind of sympathetic bond with him. King Kong has more of a personality. Armando grunts a lot and scowls, he is a big bad tough guy, and looks you dead in the eye and pledges his commitment to family. Please, give me a break with that already and with that, this movie turns into a comedy. None of this plot is believable and the commitment these violent people have to one another is ridiculous. But like any car wreck, you cannot take your eyes off of it and do you know why? Part of it is curiosity and I wanted to see how this debacle was going to finally end. The other part was that I wanted to get my money worth because it was so bad. My heart told me to walk out but I paid $15 bucks for this and wanted to get every cent's worth no matter how bad it was.
There was an ending and to be honest it didn't make much of an impression and I barely remember it. There was a part where Armando ends up in some kind of futuristic high tech prison, unrealistic I know, and I was disappointed that he didn't get blown up like his mother. There was some corny ice-cold dialogue between him and Will Smith and the last shot hinted at another sequel. My heart sank to the floor and I thought, "Oh God no". Now this is terrible for us as the audience but this is absolutely great news for the filmmakers.
Overall the fact that this film grossed $400 million dollars in such a short time says something revealing about its marketbase. There is so much fluff that goes on in this silly plot that its hard to take seriously. Yet, the reviewers all loved it and this is what sells.
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