BAD BOYS II

Violence-prone drugbusters Mike and Marcus are back, this time stirring up a bloody revolution in Cuba.

CAST: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Gabrielle Union, Joe Pantoliano, Theresa Randle, Tom Hillmann, Gino Salvano, Peter Stormare, Henry Rollins, Jordi Molla, Bubba Baker

DIRECTOR: Michael Bay

"‘Bad Boys II’ is a bloated, unpleasant assembly-line extrusion in which there are a lot of chases and a lot of killings and explosions…No one in the movie is very interesting; our eyes glaze over during yet another bone-tired retread of chase scenes that we have seen over and over again…The heroes of ‘Bad Boys II’ are egotistical monsters, concerned only with their power, their one-liners, their weapons, their cars, their desires…Everybody involved in this project needs to do some community service." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Michael Bay’s latest jingoistic fetish film could be the most vile creation to come out of Hollywood since ‘Patch Adams’…From Miami to Cuba, every location is a mere amusement park for a series of endless shoot-outs and explosions…there’s no joy to Bay’s complete and utter disregard for human life…How does one even begin to explain the sadistic pleasure the filmmakers take in orchestrating elaborate deaths?…The boys chase after a funeral hearse carrying carved-out human bodies filled with bags of Ecstasy. As the corpses fall out of the hearse, Burnett and Lowrey dutifully run them over and make quickie jokes when a body gets stuck on their windshield."--Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

"Quite a bit was clearly spent on the assaultive, bombastic, and occasionally funny spectacle that is ‘Bad Boys II.’ Mr. Bay may lack restraint (also taste, wit and shame), but he does have an undeniable flair for sleaze, noise and vulgarity. One of his most impressive feats is to film a nightclub rave scene so that the camera glides under the skirts and between the legs of the women…A similarly cold, aggressive voyeurism characterizes the film's violence, which is relentless and often gruesome. Corpses are probed for drugs hidden inside them; a bucket of severed limbs, still dripping blood, is placed on a dining-room table." --A.O. Scott, The New York Times

"A mind-boggling, nerve-numbing, adrenaline-pumping combination of shock-and-awe brilliance and idiocy from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Michael Bay and credited writers Ron Shelton and Jerry Stahl, the new cop thriller ‘Bad Boys II’ doesn't just raise the bar on movie action — it pulverizes the bar, along with most of your senses… bullets tear through the air, bodies scatter like confetti, sometimes in slow motion, although most everything else happens very fast…Smith's ability to put over a scene, combined with his matinee charm, goes a long way to making the film's violence palatable…Bay has done more to change the look, the pace, the vibe and even the way space is organized within the frame than anyone else working in the genre. I'm not sure if he's any good, but like his producer he's some kind of genius." --Manohla Dargis, The Los Angeles Times

Hollywood's testosterone competition is over and the winner is ‘Bad Boys II.’ Can we all go home now and stop wasting our time and money?…‘Bad Boys II’ stakes out new territory on the frontier of cinematic excess. More than any other film this summer (including ‘Charlie's Angels 2,’ which is saying something), it stands as a symbol of everything that's wrong with modern Hollywood." --Marshall Fine, The Journal News

"In the iron logic of summer movies, filmmakers are locked into a big-bang theory. The bang at the end has got to be bigger and badder than any previous bangs, and so hot-dog director Michael Bay, who's already engineered a fabulous car chase in which Chevy Malibus drop off an auto carrier and bounce along the roadway like pumpkins to dissuade our heroes in pursuit, has to find the bigger bang. He overreaches badly…The movie really loses its mind in its concluding commando junket…It's simply preposterous that the Miami Police Department would invade Cuba with more firepower than the 101st Airborne hauled into Iraq." --Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post

"‘Bad Boys II’ is the apotheosis of adolescent junk. Every sequence spews or splats carnage-filled effects…More bullets get shot, more cars totaled, more dummies crushed or decapitated than in the ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’ series combined…Bay does have a knack for giving pubescent boys their kicks…He realizes that for his audience, it's not enough to send Lowrey and Burnett hurtling down a steep hillside dotted with drug-lab shacks; for the sequence to deliver the requisite cheap thrills, they must hurtle through the shacks and set them ablaze. As a result, the movie is ludicrously over-scaled." --Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun

"Director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer know how to press all the buttons, spend all the money, shoot off all the cliches. They're slick and shameless, and this second time around they've got a huge budget and even bigger stars (the Lawrence and Smith of today rather than the hot young TV stars of 1995). The result is a movie that is entertaining and exciting and doesn't let up for a second--but one that is also sometimes jaw-droppingly awful…The story is the same old crock of garbage, but every scene is spruced and revved, with Bay's camera performing acrobatic feats worthy of a wired-up Ridley Scott." --Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

"From ‘Bad Boys’ to ‘The Rock’ to ‘Armageddon’ and ‘Pearl Harbor,’ the amped-up collaborations of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay have resulted in some of the most soullessly slick products in the history of movies…Anything for a cheap laugh or a (not-so-cheap) cheap thrill. Lawrence and Smith fill in the downtime with buddy-buddy badinage, but is this sort of byplay even necessary anymore? In today’s mega–action comedy, any kind of genuine characterization has become vestigial." --Peter Rainer, New York Magazine

"It's bigger. It's louder. And, like the title says, it's bad. If you think you're tough enough, go ahead and sit through the endurance test that is ‘Bad Boys II,’ a brutal, 2 1/2-hour display of production overkill. Serious real estate and multitudes of vehicles were destroyed in the making of this movie, but to what end?…‘Bad Boys II’ throws money at the screen so hard that the waste buildup is sickening." --Jami Bernard, The New York Daily News