Exactly how xenophobic is “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”?

Hehehehhehe

Baby Rod

Hahhahah

Hehhe

Haha

Hah

Ahheheh

Heh

This fucking movie.

I love Michael Bay.

Classic Bay

That guy is such a tool. I fucking love how dumb his movies are. I love the explosions, I love the sweaty men, I love the gratuitous explosions, I love the gunfire, I love the color grading, I love the angsty macho insecurities, I love the thinly veiled xenophobia, I love that every time Bay depicts the military in his movies they look dope as fuck and dopey as fuck at the same time.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die, or BB: RoD, pronounced ‘baby rod’, which is how I know Michael Bay would want his movie to be known as, is such a CLASSIC fucking Bay film. I have been itching for his flavor of nonsense for so long. So long. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie like this since I first saw Bay’s Battleship.

And you know what? Michael Bay is a genius director. He’s not a writer, he’s not a social justice warrior (and I mean this with as much respect to political correctness as possible), he’s not the kind of guy who cares about a damn thing. All he wants to do is entertain, and he is so so so good at entertaining his audience. And that’s kind of the thing, too; he knows who his audience is. He knows his audience is going to find a shot of Martin Lawrence’s face pressed against a hot dog roller window hilarious. Bay knows that his viewers signed up for fast cars, big guns, jiggly titties, bullets to the brain, and that classic Miami ‘dale, mami!’ Like I mentioned in my review for the Twilight movies, Bay doesn’t make movies for anyone who isn’t his core audience. He’s a master of his craft, not a people pleaser.

I’m raving about Michael Bay as a director because this film allowed him to get as ‘Michael Bay’ as possible. Possibly the most ‘Michael Bay’ that Michael Bay has been since Transformers 2. In Baby Rod Bay goes crazy in trying fun, new, refreshing filming techniques for otherwise run-of-the-mill action sequences. Bay knows he’s shot hundreds of gunfights, and he knows he must innovate. Like I predicted in my review for The Grey Man, where the Russo Brothers introduced (as far as I know) the use of drones in mainline films, Bay seems to have found their perfect use in Baby Rod. Bay doesn’t stop there, as he filters in and out of half a dozen techniques to innovate his gunfights and action, to the point that we almost stop noticing that what would normally be a mind-numbing sequence is now a literal roller coaster.

Hurrah!

Oh also, and I cannot say this without giggling: USMC. I know I sound like a guy who knows an inside joke that you don’t, but that’s because I do and I am. There’s a dumb fucking sequence in the middle of the film, wherein some guy who’s living in Martin Lawrence’s house (I think he’s his son-in-law? I don’t know) is the only macho male man left at home, where they’re being attacked by nameless henchman. This guy is a US Marine on leave, who happens to have a gun in a safe, which he uses to utterly annihilate 15 bad guys. It’s a great sequence, despite the fact that I called it dumb, but that’s because it really falls apart right at the end. The guy safely ferries the female women ladies out of the house, looks to the camera, where he somehow knows he’s being watched by Lawrence and Will Smith, and then fucking salutes.

He salutes. The man, wearing a USMC shirt, having been a straight-up badass, salutes.

For the idiots in the crowd, this is as blatant as propaganda can get. In fact, it cannot at all get more blatant than this.

Classic Michael Bay.

And yes, I fucking know he didn’t direct this movie, and it was actually Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah.

The movie Baby Rod does not feature much, if any, blatant homophobia, sexism, transphobia, or racism- even though Lawrence does accuse multiple people and animals of racism. This movie needs to be rated a

YMMV

Because I know my girlfriend would not be happy if I rated this movie a good, or what I’d like to rate it- FUCKING EXCELLENT. Hehe. Heehee.

Wondering how my rating system works? Let me explain!