Filled with enough car crashes to fill two movies, Bad Boys II is a typical Bruckheimer/Bay production... a lot of stylish action and violence and little or no story.

Let's see... There's a guy named Johnny Tapia who is running ecstasy around Miami clubs. He takes his money and loads them up in coffins and sends them to Cuba. Our Bad Boy cops Burnett and Lowrey, are hard on his heels, especially when Burnett's little sister, who is a DEA agent, gets caught in the middle. Throw in a couple of Russians and you've got your story.

Going into Bad Boys II you knew perfectly well there wasn't going to be any story worth talking about. So enjoyment of this movie was going to come down to the action and the comedy. So let's start with the action. As I said earlier, there were enough car crashes to cover two films. Some of it inventive, most of it done before, but all in all, done pretty well. Sometimes it was hard to follow; you wonder where certain cars are and how they seem to be in different places at different times, but the quick cutting at least kept it interesting. There was also a surprisingly large number of disturbing images (well, disturbing to some, entertaining to others). Serious close-ups of people getting shot in the head, other people having heads pop off, some nasty things done to dead bodies... used more for shock value than for moving the story along, but it had its desired effect; it got people in the audience muttering in surprise. There was also a good amount of old fashioned illegal police action that we used to see a lot in past films, but recently haven't seen. Illegal entry and wiretaps, trashing office space, intimidating witnesses, stuff that in today's world most movies would have at least had the cops on suspension but in this film was accepted. I'm not sure if I found it necessary but the crowd loved it. The one scene I didn't like was when the two cops were intimidating a 15 year old picking up Burnett's daughter for a date. True, what they said was funny, but the poor kid was so sweet and even in the context of the movie you felt so bad for him you wished they would just stop. If he was played as a pompous ass it would have been OK, but to have him stand there so nice and sweet, it bothered me.

Then there was the comedy aspect, something that doesn't come through in the commercials. This movie had a lot of laughs, most coming thanks to Martin Lawrence's whiny, I-want-a-new-partner-before-I-die shtick. In these kinds of movie I always ask myself, would this movie have been the same if two other actors had these roles? With the Will Smith character, you could almost thrown in someone else and have it be the same movie. But no one could have taken Lawrence's place. His mannerisms and comedy timing was easily the comedic highlight of the film. I have to guess that a lot of their lines were ad-libbed because they seemed to flow so well from what was happening on screen, it almost couldn't have been scripted ahead of time. Yes, the Fresh Prince had some good lines every so often, but for the most part he played second fiddle to Lawrence.

I also liked Gabrielle Union's little sister character. Here we finally had a good looking woman who wasn't just eye candy. Yes she looked good and they put her in a bikini. But they also gave her something to do. She was a Drug Enforcement agent who got to throw down with the big boys in one of the big car chases. It's rare in these kinds of films to have a strong woman character who gets to do something other than look good and need saving. True, she did need to be saved, but she also got to shoot people, and really, what more could you ask for?

So overall, Bad Boys II was a good summer, popcorn film. A lot of action, good laughs, some disturbing images and not a lot to think about.

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