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Matthew Davies

Cert: R

Cat.no: 10712

Running time: 119 minutes

Year: 1999

Pressing: 2000

Region(s): 1, NTSC

Chapters: 28 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround

Languages: English, Spanish

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.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Matthew Davies, 2000.

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: