When Will Smith jumped onto the stage at the 2022 Oscars and slapped presenter Chris Rock in the face, "it looked as if his career could well be over", said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. "Since the incident, he's only had one film released, the already completed slave drama 'Emancipation'."
As a result, much now hangs on "Bad Boys: Ride or Die", the fourth film in the longrunning cop-buddy franchise in which he co-stars with Martin Lawrence. Smith "badly needs it to be good". And actually, it's not at all bad. It won't win awards, but it's the kind of film "that commercial cinema used to be all about".
This time round, "our increasingly less than dynamic" duo are called upon to clear the name of their beloved former boss (Joe Pantoliano), who was killed in the last film and is now facing posthumous accusations of corruption. The film is "glossy, flashy and thoroughly entertaining"; and Smith manages to be "vulnerable, likeable and charismatic. In other words, just what he needed" to be. Will it be enough to resurrect his career? "We'll have to wait and see."
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I'm afraid it didn't win me over, said Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post. Lawrence is "as boisterously silly as ever", but Smith looks "dead behind the eyes", and the plot is entirely formulaic.
The film "delivers on the key basic requirements for popcorn escapism", said Wendy Ide in The Observer: it is directed with "brash flamboyance", with lots of exploding vehicles, sweeping drone shots of "shimmering, sinful Miami", and slo-mo clips of "bikini-clad babes playing beach volleyball". But if "the bullets mainly find their targets, the jokes do not"; and "the comic chemistry between Smith and Lawrence" has started to feel decidedly "laboured and stale".
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