The knock-on effect from last year’s Hollywood strikes is that showy, tent-pole studio releases are thin on the ground this year. Cinemas will no doubt be hoping that audiences starved of big, dumb, trigger-happy action spectacles will find their appetites sated by Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the fourth film in the high-octane maverick cop buddy movie franchise, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. It certainly delivers on the key basic requirements for popcorn escapism: it’s directed with such brash flamboyance, it seems as though every other shot is a vehicle exploding, a sweeping drone shot of shimmering, sinful Miami, or a slo-mo clip of bikini-clad babes playing beach volleyball.
The action sequences are splashily implausible and executed with scant regard for the risk of collateral damage. And if it’s not entirely braindead, let’s just say that this is not a mentally taxing viewing experience either. And if the bullets mainly find their targets, the jokes do not. The comic chemistry between Smith and Lawrence – at least as important to the appeal of the original films as the flashy cars and body count – now feels laboured and stale.
• In UK and Irish cinemas now
