Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)

Bad Boys: Ride or Die arrives as the fourth entry in a franchise that has been running since 1995, and it behaves accordingly. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return as Miami detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett, this time attempting to clear the name of their late captain after he is posthumously framed as a cartel collaborator. The plot involves a corrupt mayoral candidate, a prison break, an alligator-themed amusement park, and a helicopter that falls out of the sky with minimal consequence. It is a buddy cop picture in the classical mode, which is to say it is loud, loosely assembled, and largely indifferent to the cultural currents of its own decade.

The cast is predominantly Black, as it has been for four films now, with Latino and mixed supporting players filling out the ranks. This is the franchise's inheritance, not its argument. Race surfaces nowhere as a subject; the story concerns police corruption and a dead man's reputation. Women occupy positions of authority (a captain, a U.S. marshal) and acquit themselves in gunfights, though the film advances no thesis about them. They are competent because the script requires competence, and for no grander reason. The villain is a crooked politician, which is the oldest flavor of crime-thriller antagonist available, and the film has no interest in redistributing anyone's wealth.

There is no LGBTQ content, no environmental concern, no neurodivergent character, and no historical record in need of correction. Marcus suffers a heart attack and is thereafter convinced he cannot die, a development played entirely for laughs and stakes. The film's moral instruction amounts to a shrug. It wants to sell tickets and it did, topping the domestic box office on its opening weekend. As a cultural document, it is a fossil of a pre-2015 sensibility, preserved in amber and still firing weapons.