Marin Lawrence never really took off like Will Smith did. This might have been because Martin is not traditionally good-looking and had to rely mostly on his comic appeal and he also wasn't as believable as an action hero since he is quite short (sorry Martin.) It was a pretty interesting crossroads for these two stars though and Bad Boys is a wildly entertaining film that I enjoyed immensely.
Was Michael Bay already a well-known action-film director in 1995? I honestly don't know because I was not paying attention to director names at that point in my life. I think the main thing that was going on was that Will Smith and Martin Lawrence were transitioning out of sitcoms and moving onto the silver screen and everyone wanted to see them work together. That was my reasoning anyway.
The movie goes like this Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) are a couple of cops who are investigating a bunch of confiscated drugs that have gone missing and the police force suspects it was an inside job. They have a limited amount of time in order to figure out whodunnit or the Feds are going to take over and shut down their precinct. It is a pretty typical plotline for cop movies.
They also need an attractive lady to be involved in the storyline so in comes Julie Mott (Téa Leoni) who is a witness to the crime but will only speak to Mike Lowry for some trust reason. Hilarity ensues when Marin Lawrence needs to pretend that he IS Mike Lowry - when MIke is well-known for being a playboy when he, Marcus, is a dedicated family man.
The action is good, the pacing is good, the casting was done well and the comedy isn't the entire film - it is actually a small part of it and according to lore much of the comedic stuff in the film was ad libbed because the script was considered quite dry and boring by Michael Bay. Bay asked Lawrence and Smith to help spice it up a bit and much of the comedy wasn't in the screenplay at all.
this is how the "freeze! mother bitches!" line came to be... but in today's SJW world that would probably be too anti-non-native-English-speaker or some other nonsense
I would say if you are my age there isn't much chance you haven't already seen this film but if you are younger than I am you should have a look at what Will Smith's early film career looked like.
I am a sucker for mindless action films and therefore really like this movie and other ones similar to it. There is nothing particularly ground-breaking about anything that happens in this film and Michael Bay caught some flak from critics for using superfluous explosions rather than having a real story... a system that has pretty much defined his career over the past 23 years and made him super-duper rich.
