Three Stupid Movies: Bad Boys II, Panic Room, and Who Saw Her Die?



Bad Boys II (2003) is a very stupid movie. I'm not necessarily all that turned off by stupid action movies (I loved The Transporter, and that was dumber than a bag of armpit hair), but Bad Boys II is so stupid, I couldn't ignore the stupidity and concentrate on what should have been fun.

The plot, such as it is, is about Miami cops Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) trying to bust drug lord Tapia (Jordi Molla). There are innumerable car chases and shootouts, and there's some silliness about how Marcus' beautiful younger sister (Gabrielle Union) is both Mike's secret girlfriend and an undercover DEA agent who has become the money launderer of choice for drug lords all over the country.

Rather than try to talk about everything that's stupid about this movie, I'm just going to highlight the three stupidest scenes.

3. In the opening scene of the movie a group of KKK member try to hold a rally and receive a large shipment of ecstasy at the same time. Because nothing makes illegal smuggling easier than lighting crosses on fire. But that's not the stupid part. The stupid part is that Mike and Marcus are undercover among the Klansmen. What police department would send black people undercover at Klan meeting?

2. For most of the movie Mike and Marcus show almost superhuman disregard for the lives of other people, innocent or criminal. They sometime initiate gunfights in crowded public places, and in one scene they shoot out the windows of a train car full of standing people. And then there's the huge car chase where the bad guys blow up cars and even drop cars off a car carrier into heavy traffic. We see dozens of cars spin out, crash and even blow up. Yet Mike and Marcus don't ever spare a single thought to any of the people in those cars. In fact, Mike is much more concerned about the headlight of his Ferrari getting shot out.

But that's not the stupid part. After all the car chases, shootouts and scenes where dead bodies are desecrated (this movie is really big on that for some reason), Tapia kidnaps Marcus' sister. Suddenly Marcus and Mike get really somber, and Marcus emotionally declares, "Now this shit just got serious." Apparently all those other innocent people who got killed earlier didn't really count because Marcus didn't know them personally.

1. In Cuba Marcus and Mike commandeer a Hummer and in a mad dash to reach Guantanamo Bay drive through shanty town on the side of a hill. This is an obvious rip-off of the chase scene at the beginning of Jackie Chan's Police Story, but that's not the stupid part. The stupid part is that there's a line of dialogue explaining that it's alright to destroy all these poor people's only shelter (and probably kill a few of them) because this shanty town on the side of a cliff is where they "make cocaine." No, Cuba isn't a cocaine producing country. No, we don't see any evidence that this shanty town has anything to do with drugs. All we see is hanging laundry and piles of bananas. Maybe they make cocaine out of bananas! In Bad Boys II, even that wouldn't be too stupid to contemplate putting in the script.

Panic Room (2002) is a fairly taut thriller with a really stupid concept at it's core. Jodie Foster plays a woman separated from her rich husband who moves, with her daughter, into an enormous New York City brownstone. The brownstone comes equipped with a "panic room," a kind of vault that's supposed to keep the the residents safe in case of a home invasion. (Remember when that used to be just called armed robbery?) Of course, the brownstone does get invaded, and there's a cat and mouse game between Jodie and daughter in the panic room and three thieves looking for $22 million that's hidden in... the panic room.

The problem is that the panic room makes no sense, unless you want to make this movie. If someone invades your house you don't want to be trapped in there with them, no matter how secure the room you're in may be. Considering how well the room is hidden, it would seem much simpler to just build an escape route. And the panic room wouldn't make a good vault, because it only locks if someone is in it already. The movie might have made sense if the panic room had been a bomb shelter, but it's on the second floor and dialogue repeatedly reminds us this panic room was built special and ones like it are becoming a standard feature in urban architecture. I guess someone figured that this mythical panic room would appeal to people's paranoia about crime.

Who Saw Her Die? (1972) is an early Italian "giallo," or graphic crime thriller. George Lazenby plays an artist living in Venice with his daughter. His daughter is murdered by someone dressed lie an old lady wearing a black veil. Who did it? Was it the artist's friend, who shows a little too much interest in the daughter? The priest who runs a youth program? The artist's girlfriend, who feels neglected by him? The lawyer who has a connection to an earlier child murder? Lazenby runs around Venice, apparently investigating the crime, and more people get murdered. But there are no clues, no motive is ever uncovered for any of the murders. Any one of the suspects could have done it, and it would make the same amount as sense. You know what? The priest did it. Makes no difference. The very last shot of the film lamely reaches for a twist ending, as the artist leaves by boat his friend runs up and says "He was only posing as a priest!" Uh, okay. I guess that explains why he was molesting little girls, but it doesn't explain why he was killing people in the first place or why he dressed like an old lady when he did.

Editor's note: We would like to apologize for the joke about priests molesting children. It was not up to the standards usually aspired to by this blog, and needless offensive to Catholic priests, some of whom have probably never molested anyone.

Posted: Thu - December 25, 2003 at      

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