I was going to try to review this movie in a traditional fashion, but as it turns out, the only kind of commentary I want to make is on the parts of the movie that actually interest me.
First, a minor observation I want to get out of the way: the black woman gets killed in the first quarter of the movie, and the white woman survives all the way to the end. I can see the supposed plot-based justification for Max Logan, played by the beautiful Karen Alexander, to die in order to motivate Detective Mike Lowry (Will Smith) to avenge her death—a lazy-ass trope that male writers in Hollywood are notorious for: woman dies to give male hero a vengeance motive and Man Pain—but beyond a brief few moments of sadness upon discovering her death, we don’t actually get much from Mike. Julie, the white female character played by Tea Leoni, makes a bigger deal out of Max’s death than Mike does.
Anyway, why the dark-skinned black female character had to be the one to die instead of the white woman, I can certainly guess. Throw the white audience a bone, right? I’m just glad that despite Marcus (Martin Lawrence) handcuffing Julie and Mike together at the end of the movie, the two don’t actually end up together.
What I found most interesting about Bad Boys was the level of open affection between Mike and Marcus. First of all, to my knowledge, this movie franchise is the only buddy cop story in which both cops are black men. Both direct and indirect expressions of love and affection are present in all of the other buddy cop relationships I know of, but the racial dynamic Mike and Marcus have—as opposed to the other buddy cop pairings out there, most of which feature two white men and the rest being interracial—makes their relationship unique and special in the genre. It remains uncommon to see black male friendship on film that is not only meaningful but which allows the men involved to openly declare their attachment to each other without some kind of joke to offset the emotional earnestness of the declaration. Black masculinity has always been held to a rigid and extreme standard compared to white masculinity, at least in entertainment, and that usually means black men’s relationships with other men are completely devoid of overt affection and emotional vulnerability, while their heterosexual escapades and appetite are aggressively displayed. Mike and Marcus get plenty of opportunity throughout the movie to show the audience how heterosexual they are, but their relationship with each other is the most important one in the film, as you would expect from a buddy cop movie.
Marcus first says “I love you” to Mike when they’re in the middle of an honest dialogue about Mike’s inherited wealth, a conversation which of course takes place in a car. Mike gets defensive and says “fuck you” to Marcus, and Marcus answers with “I love you.” It could’ve easily been delivered with levity or humor, but instead, the genuine feeling behind it comes through when Marcus softly says “I do” right after. Mike, being only a little placated but still annoyed, tells Marcus to shut up and quickly changes the subject to a criticism of Marcus’ driving. He does not return the words, but Marcus seems to be okay with that. I think it’s noteworthy that Mike also doesn’t make fun of Marcus for saying “I love you,” nor does he make some kind of anti-gay quip in response. He simply tells Marcus to shut up, then changes the subject.
The buddy cop sub-genre has always been the one corner of crime-focused media where the aggressively masculine, heterosexual male heroes have to juggle their performance of masculinity, their heterosexual image, their anti-gay anxiety, and their tender feelings for a male partner all at the same time. The tension of this act is fascinating to me. That both Mike and Marcus are black men adds another layer to the complexity of the relationship.
Bad Boys acknowledges the anti-gay anxiety of both its characters and the subgenre itself, maybe even more directly than other buddy cop movies: when Mike and Marcus are pretending to be each other to Julie, she openly admits she wondered if Marcus was gay because of the many framed photographs of Mike in Mike’s apartment (that Marcus is pretending belongs to him). Marcus, of course, immediately denies there being a gay relationship between him and Mike and instead tries to explain the photographic shrine as a cop thing: a tribute to your partner for saving your life. The scene is supposed to be funny, and it is, using Mike’s self-centeredness and vanity against him while he isn’t there and putting Marcus in the awkward position of having to explain why he’s got multiple framed photographs of another man in his apartment that isn’t really his. But it’s also the movie’s way of letting the air out of the gay anxiety tires, for both the characters and the heterosexual audience. This anxiety has to be allayed some way somehow, if the two men are going to be openly emotional about their relationship and affectionate toward each other. What’s interesting about Bad Boys is that Mike and Marcus don’t acknowledge what I’m going to call the Gay Question to each other, nor do they ever make anti-gay comments in each other’s presence. I’ve definitely seen that in other buddy copy movies—the original Lethal Weapon comes to mind—but rather than go that route, Bad Boys addresses the Gay Question in a humorous way. I much prefer this approach to the more derisive kind where the men make unprompted, cutting, homophobic remarks.
I have to briefly acknowledge the scene where Marcus becomes so paranoid that Mike is hooking up with Marcus’ wife that he attempts to catch them in the act. I won’t bore you with a lengthy discussion of it, but this is a long-acknowledged trope in academic literary analysis: two men bonding with each other through their mutual sexual connection to a woman, channeling their sublimated homoerotic feelings for each other into their competitive attentions to the woman. Men using women to be closer to each other, basically. I didn’t read Mike, Marcus, and Theresa that way at all, but I think it bears mentioning that this kind of “love triangle” ultimately about the male/male relationship at its heart goes back a long ways in literature and continues to appear in film. Despite Mike’s reputation as a womanizer, it’s made clear that his loyalty to Marcus makes an affair with Theresa, Marcus’ wife, utterly out of the question. Marcus recognizes how ludicrous his fear of Mike and Theresa hooking up is and apologizes to Mike.
The movie ends with another “I love you” exchange between Mike and Marcus, but this time, Mike says the words back to Marcus. Marcus is a bit surprised, and Mike says, without looking at him, “Yeah, I said it.” It’s significant that the movie essentially ends with these two men declaring their love to each other. Sure, after their dialogue, Marcus handcuffs Mike to Julie and walks away to go home to his wife, but this predictable moment of returning to heterosexuality feels like an afterthought, not the conclusion itself. After the big shoot-out and the car chase and the explosions and Mike killing the bad guy, the story ultimately returns to what really matters: the love and relationship between the two male heroes, which give all of the aforementioned action a sense of meaning it wouldn’t otherwise have. It almost feels like the criminal plot was merely a vehicle to get Mike and Marcus to that mutual “I love you,” to give Mike a reason to say the words back to Marcus.
Bad Boys, like any buddy cop movie, is about men bonding because of violence. Entertainment is full of the reverse set-up too: men, usually either active military or criminals, bonding through committing violence. In either scenario, violence creates the need for the men to protect each other from serious injury and death, creating the kind of high stakes that naturally evoke strong feelings. There’s a particular intensity to attachments between people who depend on each other for survival, which most ordinary civilians will never know. So the kind of emotional bond that can exist between police partners is exceptional amongst both the general population and the male population specifically. The life-or-death situations that arise in the buddy cop movie not only stimulate a strong emotional bond between the two cops but allow that bond to be expressed with openness or tenderness that male civilians living quiet lives and working nonviolent jobs can’t indulge in because of the masculine heterosexual imperative. If Mike and Marcus were co-workers in an insurance office or a construction firm or an auto shop or any other non-violent setting, they wouldn’t be able to get away with spontaneous expressions of love, nor would they have occasion to engage in them.
“You always get emotional after gun fights,” Mike says to Marcus at the end of the movie, in response to Marcus saying “I love you.” Not one but two “I love you’s” in the span of one movie, from Marcus to Mike. It’s rare even for heterosexual couples to exchange the words more than once in a romance movie, but Marcus can get away with telling Mike a second time in their story because they did just survive a shoot-out, explosions, and a high-speed chase. Mike verbally points this out for the audience, who might be raising their eyebrows at Marcus during this scene.
All in all, Bad Boys was an okay buddy cop movie. Mike and Marcus’ friendship was the most compelling thing about it for me. The plot is unremarkable, and I found Julie’s character grating. At least some of the action was over-the-top and unbelievable, but that’s typical of cop movies. I don’t love Bad Boys enough to watch it again and again, the way I do Lethal Weapon, but I did appreciate watching Mike and Marcus the one time. Only time will tell if I decide to watch the sequels.
From the Desk of Marie S. Crosswell 