10 Movies They Didn't Know How To End
5. Bad Boys II
Bad Boys II just might be the most Michael Bay movie that Michael Bay has ever made: it's visually stunning, brutally violent, obnoxiously childish, blatantly sexist and racist...and about 30 minutes too long.
The film seems set to climax with an epic raid on the mansion of Cuban drug lord Johnny Tapia (Jordi MollĂ ), but once this oddly curtailed set-piece is concluded, Tapia escapes and kidnaps Marcus' (Martin Lawrence) sister, Syd (Gabrielle Union), taking her to Cuba.
Now what's basically a second climax to the movie unfolds, where Marcus and Mike (Will Smith) raid Tapia's Cuban compound and the action finally resolves at a minefield outside Guanatanamo Bay (yes, really).
Clearly Bay had a lot of ideas for staging action sequences, but in the interest of efficiency it would've made sense to combine these two set-pieces into a single finale, moving Syd's kidnapping up to before the initial mansion raid. If Syd really even needed to be kidnapped at all, that is.
Instead, Bad Boys II's third act is almost exhausting in its excessiveness, as though Bay wasn't quite sure he'd given audiences enough bang for their buck yet. You had, Michael, you had.