Subtitles: English for the hearing impaired, French, Spanish, Portuguese,
Chinese, Korean, Thai
Widescreen: 1.85:1
16:9-Enhanced: Yes
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 9
Price: $24 (personal import)
Extras :
Digitally mastered audio & anamorphic video, Michael Bay commentary, two
documentaries, isolated music score, three music videos, trailers, talent
files, production notes booklet, animated menus, scene selection.
Director:
Michael Bay
Cast:
Mike Lowrey: Will Smith Marcus Burnett: Martin Lawrence Julie Mott: Tea Leoni
Bad Boys
is one of those films that you should really hate. Buddy cop
movies are a genre that is quite hard to get right. Do it properly and it
works really well, Lethal Weapon for example. Get it wrong and the movie
stinks, just ask any critic what they thought of The Last Boy Scout and
you'll get my meaning. (DVDfever Ed: "Hey, I loved that
movie and I'm looking forward to next year's Bay/Bruckheimer collaboration, 'Pearl
Harbour'")
Bad Boys follows the standard Bruckheimer / Simpson action
formula and doesn't try to do anything too original. The film has a script
that even the director calls poor and a plot that is practically
transparent, but despite these flaws Bad Boys is actually a really good
movie. What makes Bad Boys so much more than just the sum of its parts is
FUN. The movie knows that the plot is crazy and the script weak but it
never tries to be anything more than a good, fun, action movie. The film
relies heavily on it's two main leads and despite the fact that they did a
lot of improvisation on set, they carry the movie really well, in fact this
is probably the best work from both Smith and Lawrence.
The movie follows Lowrey, a single, rich romeo and Burnett, a married
husband and father as they attempt to get back $100 million worth of heroin
stolen in a daring raid on their police station. They have no clues or
leads until Julie Mott witnesses the murder of a close friend who also
happens to be a close friend of Lowrey. Julie calls the Miami P.D. and gets
through to Burnett who has to pretend to be Lowrey.
This leads to Lowrey pretended to be Burnett and vice versa, and the movies
follows them trying to adjust to each others lifestyles. Later on in the
movie Julie is kidnapped by the bad guys and this leads to an explosive climax.
By reading these last few lines you see what I mean about plot!
The quality of the disc is excellent with a clear and well defined picture
with sharp edges and no colour bleed. The sound is at best average with the
rear speakers not getting much of a workout until the last 15 minutes, but
despite that it is always clear and crisp and dialogue is precise even
during action sequences.
The disc contains quite a few extras and they are all easily accessed by
the nicely animated and well laid out menu system. The extras consist of a
production photo gallery which contains mostly photos of Michael Bay and is
not really worth looking at twice. Three trailers (Bad Boys, Men In Black
and Blue Streak) are also on the disc and again will probably be
watched just the once. The usual talent files are also in place and again
with talent files, once you seen them once the novelty wears thin.
Three music videos are also watchable despite two of them being rather poor in
quality and adhering to the basic movie soundtrack video formula of having the
song mixed with action scenes from the movie. One video that does stand out is
Shy Guy by Diana King. This video features Smith and Lawrence
fooling about and dancing in very unique ways and I must admit did make me
laugh!
Damage Control makes up the largest part of the extras and is broken down into
three sections. Firstly is Firearms, this is a series of small films, all
shot in very slow motion, of people firing real guns at everyday objects such
as a TV. The camera angle can be switched to view the impact from various
angles. I found, despite this being a basic concept, to be almost hypnotic
and this is must be the DVD equivalent of a lava lamp. Pyrotechics is the
second part of Damage Control and is quite similar to Firearms except, you
guessed it, they are blowing things up instead of shooting them. The third
part of Damage Control, is "The Boom and Bang of Bad Boys". This is a
twenty five minute documentary about how the slow motion firearms and
pyrotechnics sections were created. This is quite poor and features far too
much footage from the film, and can't quite seem to decide what is supposed
to be.
If you already own Bad Boys on DVD I would suggest sticking with the version
you already have, unless you are desperate for the commentary. If, however,
you don't own Bad Boys or missed it the first time around then I would rate
it as a DVD purchase especially if you like the genre of movie.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
