2003 will go down in movie history as the year of the freeway action scene. Final Destination 2 gave audiences a taste of highway carnage back in January, and three summer films have already featured intense car chases: The Matrix Reloaded, Terminator 3, and the latest addition to the list, Bad Boys II. In true Michael Bay fashion, the latter tries to outdo all other movies in every department by going for broke.

Average action movies have standard gunfights and car chases; with Bay at the helm, the audience ends up with shotgun-wielding Klansmen, explosions tossing bodies through the air like rag dolls, and virtually any gruesome form of body part removal you can imagine. Watching Bad Boys II makes one wonder if Mr. Bay was compensating for the lack of a story. Running nearly two and a half hours long, this sequel to the fairly successful 1995 production Bad Boys goes on much too long for a cop movie with its action volume cranked up to 11. That amounts to about 150 minutes of nonstop violence, profanity-laced banter, and total lack of respect for public property; love it or hate it, that’s how Bad Boys II works, announcing right away that if stuff getting blown up in your face for an afternoon isn’t your game, you might as well go find Nemo again. Loud, over-the-top, and often fun, Bad Boys II defines the brainless summer movie season to a tee.

Bad Boys II sees the return of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett, respectively, two members of the Miami Police Department’s special Tactical Narcotics Team (in other words, “TNT”; oh, the richness of the humor…). With a reputation for causing trouble wherever they go, the guys are heading into their latest, most dangerous assignment. Miami drug lord Johnny Tapia (Jordi Mollà) is bringing huge shipments of “souped-up” Ecstasy into the city every week. The police want to crack down hard on the crook, who’s managed to elude arrest time and time again, and this is where the bad boys of TNT come into the picture. As Lowrey and Burnett search for some evidence to expose Tapia and crumble his drug ring, they also contend with their lives off-duty. A more calmed-down Burnett is preparing to transfer to a different partner, and Lowrey is dating Burnett’s sister, DEA agent Sydney (Gabrielle Union). However, neither tells the other what’s going on. In the meantime, the quest to blow the lid on Tapia’s criminal activities intensifies, leading to a seemingly endless stream of car crashes, gun battles, and various explosions that get Lowrey and Burnett no further in fulfilling their assignment.

Why release a sequel to Bad Boys now, eight years after the original picture hit theatres? It's beyond me. And I can't help wondering why, during all that time, writers couldn't come up with a screenplay that’s less formulaic and predictable as the first movie. Nevertheless, while its predecessor felt a bit tired and worn-out before it got started, Bad Boys II has learned its lesson and constantly pumps the story full of action until it’s almost bursting through the seams.

Ironically, that relentless action ends up as one of the film’s biggest problems. Bad Boys II is so pre-occupied with being exciting and not losing the audience’s attention that it suffers from serious action overload. Director Bay speeds on and on without properly developing the relationship between Mike and Sydney or creating a worthwhile bad guy or injecting at least a little originality into the plot. Instead, the man responsible for Armageddon and Pearl Harbor concentrates on giving moviegoers a collective headache by never lessening his assault on the senses. Although I love big, loud action flicks as much as the next guy, and Bay admittedly makes the action look slick and entertaining here (especially the freeway chase, with cars being dropped in front of the guys for the sole purpose of being dodged), Bad Boys II eventually proves to be too much of a good thing. I’m quite content with the 360-degree shootout, but not quite ready to see the path of a bullet piercing Martin Lawrence’s rear end and entering its bad-guy target.

In a movie such as Bad Boys II, style compensates somewhat for a lazy and unimaginative plot. Indeed, the premise could be attributed to any number of cop movies (two bickering partners try to bust a drug dealer…gee, haven’t seen that before), and thus the script is spiced-up with the over-the-top action sequences, although the tired moments are still noticeable (the lack of good dialogue, the great Joe Pantoliano wasted as the guys’ frazzled, screaming captain, etc.). In the end, it boils down to whether or not you’re in the mood for two and a half hours of dismemberment, rats, and exploding mansions.

Despite its intense and entertaining action sequences, I didn't care much for this sequel, although it emerges as a better movie than the original. Smith and Lawrence are more comfortable as a team, the latter notable to me for playing the first role in a long time that didn't annoy me out of my mind. Whenever they’re not behind the destruction of virtually anything that can be destroyed, the guys usually share some laughs, including one scene where they terrify a kid picking up Burnett’s daughter for her first date. Union’s presence adds a good “tough chick” element to the story, but Mollà lacks charisma as the villain, and Peter Stormare wastes his talent as a Russian club owner who dumps customers OD’ing on ecstasy out in the alley.

Action movies are all about pacing. T3 was a success because it knew how to balance the nonstop action with a story and a sense of knowing when to slow down. Bad Boys II has its foot spot-welded to the gas pedal, only getting faster and more explosive as it moves along. While far from being the perfect action film, Bad Boys II at least proves that loud and flashy action movies are what Michael Bay does best.

MY RATING: ** (out of ****)

(Released by Columbia pictures and rated "R" for strong violence and action, pervasive language, sexuality and drug content.)

Review also posted at www.ajhakari.com.