Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned
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But the movie almost refuses to work on the level of mindless entertainment, thanks to Bay’s irrepressibly crass sense of humour and moral bankruptcy. The first Bad Boys had its share of sitcom-level humour, but it was mostly inoffensive and was sold enthusiastically by the leads. (There’s a scene where Martin Lawrence impersonates Will Smith by saying his name really slowly that never fails to make me laugh.) Here, we get scenes like Martin Lawrence getting shot in the ass during a gunfight with the KKK, Lawrence and Will Smith having a euphemism-laden conversation about said ass wound (and Lawrence’s inability to get an erection) played all over an electronics store, rat-****ing (literally, not in the political sense), Lawrence accidentally ingesting ecstasy, a car chase where they run over exhumed corpses, and a sequence in a morgue where the camera leers lasciviously over a bosomy corpse that Lawrence subsequently has to get uncomfortably close to. (I can only imagine Bay was pandering to necrophiliacs here, as it’s still one of the most inexplicable things I’ve seen in a movie.)
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Hmmm... The above describes what I consider to be the best parts of the film.
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I've never seen any Bad Boys movies, but I'm confused over some comments here. Running over exhumed corpses is a....bad thing?
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I've never seen any Bad Boys movies, but I'm confused over some comments here. Running over exhumed corpses is a....bad thing?
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It depends on the context.
All I can think of is why I haven't seen this in more movies! I can see it being a perfect fit in anything from Devils Rejects to Mr Smith Goes To Washington. You just need to up the stakes over how quickly Mr Smith needs to get there.
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All I can think of is why I haven't seen this in more movies! I can see it being a perfect fit in anything from Devils Rejects to Mr Smith Goes To Washington. You just need to up the stakes over how quickly Mr Smith needs to get there.
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I should add that my real issue was not the scene itself but how it fits in the movie, which arbitrarily goes every few scenes from a seemingly normal action movie to horrifically vile garbage. But I now realize that's worth admiring.
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Pearl Harbor (Bay, 2001)
I think among Michael Bay auteurists, Pearl Harbor is considered his worst movie as it's the one where his personality is least evident. As a guarded admirer of Bay, I'd held off as a result, as guarded admiration has its limits and what I've disliked from Bay I've really disliked. But coming off a viewing of Ambulance, which I loved, and a rewatch of Bad Boys II, a movie I've finally warmed up to, I figured that these would be the conditions most conducive to my appreciation of this movie and finally gave it a go. I can see where the Bayheads are coming from. This is Bay's attempt at a prestige picture, a World War II weepie made with his usual blockbuster production values, and it's executed with all the enthusiasm of a kid sullenly trying to eat his vegetables so that he can finally have dessert, or squirming uncomfortably in his Sunday suit. (I'm going with two metaphors here.)
The central romance is dead in the water. Like Top Gun, this is a case where the love story seems driven more by the kind of handsome compositions that the impossibly attractive stars can be cast in rather than any actual romantic chemistry. But where that movie at least convincingly evoked a sense of camaraderie between its male co-stars (the shirtless volleyball scenes didn't hurt), all the characterizations and plot points are recycled tropes from better movies, enacted without much grace. (You can see the movie awkwardly enact the Walk during a prep montage, but without any of the rousing qualities or sense of cool better versions of the sequence have captured.) I will say that I don't think that the actors are at fault. I think the narrative on Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale and Josh Hartnett has been that they're not very good actors (blatant ******** in the case of Beckinsale, judging from her scene-stealing work with Whit Stillman, and Affleck has at least received some level of reevaluation), but you'd need to be an awful good actor to salvage lines like "I think World War II just started!" (Affleck briefly channels his douchebag charisma from Mallrats after feeling betrayed by Hartnett and Beckinsale, but this is shortlived.) This movie invites obvious comparisons to Saving Private Ryan and Windtalkers, two sentimental World War II movies from around the same time (the former likely made this one possible), but for whatever faults you can cite with the other movies, Spielberg and Woo are sentimentalists at heart and believe in what their movies are selling. Bay's worldview, which to his credit has evolved over the years, is too crass and mean-spirited to give life to this love story. It's telling that his next movie, Bad Boys II, is likely is most corrosive.
Of course, the real reason to see this is its enactment of the Pearl Harbor attack, which the movie follows up with the Doolittle raid. Bay's direction springs to life here, like the aforementioned kid sneaking his vegetables to his dog and finally diving into a big bowl of ice cream, or tearing off his tie and saying all the cuss words he couldn't at church. (Perhaps the two metaphors are excessive, but I stand by them.) This is a sequence that might actually be appreciated by Bay's detractors, as it's unusually coherent by his standards, without sacrificing the energy level or grandiosity afforded by his editing style and production values, respectively. (He retains the lessons of Top Gun in giving some level of spatial coherence to the flight sequences.) Bay structures these sequences similar to the climax of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, one great battle sequence with individual set pieces contained within, giving some shape to the mayhem. All that being said, there is perhaps less tact than one would like in a depiction of a real world event, as Bay captures the carnage a bit too lovingly. (One particularly egregious moment has him following a bomb dropped by a Japanese plane all the way to the moment of impact, something he did again in 13 Hours, although it felt a little less crass there as it seemed more in tune with the characters' mortality.) So I understand those who took issue with these sequences, but as someone who struggled through the interminable romantic scenes with only brief dogfights to ease the pain for the first hour and a half, I enjoyed them quite a bit. I'll feel bad another day.
As a historical epic, this is also often derided for being woefully inaccurate, but offers some of the usual fun in seeing awkward renditions of famous historical figures (FDR is played by an especially hammy Jon Voight), as well as recognizable faces in the numerous supporting roles, usually saddled with extremely on the nose dialogue. Most will rightfully cite these as flaws, but I got a kick out of seeing the likes of Mako and Dan Aykroyd in World War II cosplay. I particularly enjoyed the presence of Michael Shannon, who plays his character in the same register as the one he played in Bad Boys II. Given that his character here is a war hero while the other one is a Klansman, I preferred him here. And it goes without saying that the movie looks great, a cross between the golden hour hues of a classic Bruckheimer production and the grainy immediacy of Janusz Kaminski's work in Saving Private Ryan. So there are definitely things to enjoy here, if you can tune out, like, half the movie.
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I think I gave it a 2 1/2, which means I liked it enough. And stylistically, it is very similar to Shootin', which I watched a couple of days later. Knowing what he does now, I think there might be more for me there in a revisit. But, at the time at least, it seemed sort of under done. Just barely there. His type of thing really didn't seem to work as a short for me, even though it intrigued me enough to watch more by him.
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