Bad Boys for Life

Coming nearly two decades after the last entry, this third buddy-cop continues with the series' same kind of cluttered, noisy filmmaking, but now it's accompanied by a sense of pained weariness. Belgian filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah take over for original director Michael Bay but continue with his chaotic style -- i.e. the logic of a scene doesn't matter as much as how big it is. It's often exhausting trying to follow the haywire chronological and spatial logic of the action in Bad Boys for Life, as characters move through space and time at different rates, depending on what the plot needs.

As for the "boys," they're now in their 50s, and Lawrence in particular looks like he's in physical pain most of the time, as if he can barely move. His comic timing is off, too: His profanity-laden zingers have lost their sharpness. The rest of the characters are so thinly drawn that they're lucky if they get a single character trait. (Poor Hudgens' character has none, except for a bleach-blonde cornrow hairstyle.) Smith at least proves he's a pro by selling a few of his one-liners and soul-searching speeches, but even he can't keep the phrase "for life" from sounding like a punishment.