Bad Boy

No one goes to a movie directed by Michael Bay for delicacy and grace; you go because Michael Bay (Armageddon, The Rock) knows how to make your bones rattle during a high-speed chase when a car flips over, spins through the air, and smacks another car with a visceral crunch. Bad Boys II fulfills this expectation and then some. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence may be mere puppets amid all this burning rubber and shrieking metal, but they actually provide a human core to the endless cascade of car wrecks and gunfights. Their easy rapport makes their personal problems--a running joke is Lawrence's attempts at anger management--as engaging as the sheer visual hullabaloo of bullets and explosions. The plot is recycled nonsense about drug lords and dead bodies being used to smuggle drugs, but orchestration of violence is symphonic. If that's your thing, then this is for you. --Bret Fetzer