This film sat high on the top shelf at my local small town video shop in the R rated section, long after I’d sampled some of its peers. Something about the cover, with the photo of a bloodied Sean Penn straddling another young man, most likely just prior to, or just post, administering a violent beating. Having just turned 18 odd myself, I felt ill equipped to handle real violence, even though I revelled in the over the top kind, vs aliens, nazis, terrorists or various deserving types who brought that shit on themselves.
Over time I wrote off Bad Boys as a crappy relic of a bygone era, despite never ending up watching it.
A quarter century on, I happened upon the film and thought I’d laugh along at its inadequacy and amateurism. How wrong I was.
As the film opens young Mick O’Brien (Penn) is a young troublemaker climbing the ranks of crime, before a botched heist leaves his friend and a member of a rival gang dead, and a child killed in Mick’s botched getaway. The child is the younger brother of Paco, the head of the rival gang, and while he swears revenge, it seems a lengthy time before Mick will be released from juvenile detention.
In juvie the oppression and intimidation starts extremely early. Mick is spat upon as he is lead to his cell, and suffers greatly, both mentally and physically, at the hands of the senior inmates Viking (who sports a gorgeous mullet-perm) and Tweety. And with a name like Tweety, you just know he’s gotta be scary…
For a long time the plot revolves around Mick’s proving himself in the dog eat dog world of corrective services. All of the cliches are present, but handled so well that they don’t seem that cliched as they unfold.
Never give Mick change for the vending machine if you’ve just pissed him off…
It is almost inevitable that Paco will end up inside, and once he does the circle of death starts rotating faster.
The film doesn’t take sides, despite the fact that Mick is a social menace capable of violence, we have little choice but to empathise with him, especially once it seems all are conspiring to see him fail. We root for him because he is the lesser evil in this violent and intense world.
Bad Boys has seen its name besmirched by the Will Smith action-hero vehicle (and to be fair Bad Boys hardly suggests serious and compelling drama), but for a three decade old film it is surprisingly deep and nuanced, with a slightly languid pace that never threatens boredom, and some subplots that might not be necessary, but all add value in their own way.
Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. This film might be of a similar vintage to The Warriors, but it exists in an entirely different league.
