‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ and the Will Smith Resurgence. Plus, Viggo Mortensen!

‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’the box-office savior and the Will Smith question

Bad Boys: Ride or Die 2024

The fourth Bad Boys, directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who also made Bad Boys for Life. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return as Mike and Marcus, clearing the framed-for-cartel-ties name of the late Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano). Both hosts land firmly mixed: terrific, video-game-influenced action, but too many character arcs and too little of the Mike-and-Marcus comedy that is the franchise's secret weapon. Sean ranks it 2, 1, 3, 4 (better, he says, than Bad Boys for Life). Reportedly cost $100 million and made $100 million in four days; 44% of the opening audience was Black, a demographic Sean notes was underserved by wide releases this year. Supporting: Vanessa Hudgens and Alexander Ludwig (now revealed as a couple), Rhea Seehorn as Howard's daughter, Ioan Gruffudd as the telegraphed villain, Eric Dane as the big bad, Tasha Smith replacing Theresa Randle. DJ Khaled has a kill scene; the Reggie home-defense set piece and a QR-code plot device both come up.

Bad Boys 1995

Michael Bay's original, which Sean argues (not Independence Day) is the film that made Will Smith a movie star, via the shirt-off run down the bridge Smith has described as the transformative moment of his career.

Bad Boys II 2003

Bay's sequel, which Sean calls an important action movie of the last 25 years for its chaos-and-comedy inside action sequences. Home to the classic Reggie scene the fourth film keeps trying to top.

Bad Boys for Life 2020

The third film, released January 2020 right before the shutdown. A modest hit with a getting-the-band-back-together warmth; it introduces Mike's cartel-witch son, who returns in Ride or Die. Sean didn't revisit it and ranks it last of the four.

‘The Watchers’Ishana Night Shyamalan's debut

The Watchers 2024

The debut feature from Ishana Night Shyamalan (M. Night's daughter, who produced), based on A.M. Shine's 2022 novel. Dakota Fanning plays Mina, an American in Galway whose car breaks down delivering a bird; she winds up trapped in a forest bunker with three strangers who must display themselves to shape-shifting fairies each night. Also Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan. Both hosts, self-described Shyamalan fans, find it badly paced and undercooked: a great premise and trailer, squishy rules, an all-at-once reveal delivered via a professor's video logs, and a final twin-sister twist that fumbles its own doubling idea. Sean: it 'felt like it was not ready to be a movie.'

‘The Dead Don't Hurt’Viggo's second film as director

The Dead Don't Hurt 2024

Viggo Mortensen wrote, directed, and scored this quietly mounted, non-linear Western: an anti-Western that stays with the woman. Vicky Krieps is Vivienne Le Coudy, who builds a life in Nevada with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen (Mortensen); when he leaves to fight in the Civil War, the story follows her. A semi-Deadwood reunion of character actors: Garret Dillahunt, W. Earl Brown, Danny Huston (untrustworthy, as ever), Ray McKinnon, plus newcomer Solly McLeod as the black hat. Both hosts found it a beautiful, genuinely woman-centered film.

In conversationon Westerns, structure, and the actors who taught him to direct

Viggo Mortensen on

The Dead Don't Hurt 2024

Mortensen traces the film to a girl he imagined during the 2020 lockdown who grows into Vivienne (an ordinary woman with extraordinary courage) whom he chose to drop onto the lawless frontier. He wanted a classic-looking Western in the vein of Hawks, Boetticher, or Anthony Mann, built on meticulous research (period photos, silent Westerns from ~1910 as near-firsthand documents), with the non-linear cut kept because it makes you cherish characters you know won't survive. Vicky Krieps said yes right away; he praises Solly McLeod as a real discovery.

Viggo Mortensen on

Falling 2020

His first film as director, finished just as the pandemic closed theaters; it played five months in Spain, one of the few countries that kept cinemas open.

Viggo Mortensen on

The Furies 1950

His 'last great thing': Walter Huston's final film, with Barbara Stanwyck; big, melodramatic ego-clashing that lesser actors would have blown past the top.

Viggo Mortensen on

Forty Guns 1957

Sam Fuller's 'insane' Stanwyck Western, praised for the opening full-tilt ride and an early long tracking shot through town.

Viggo Mortensen on

McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971

Robert Altman's muddy, snowy mining-town Western, which Mortensen recently rewatched. He loves the art department and the three Leonard Cohen songs woven through it.

Also mentioned raised along the way

The Will Smith résumé Independence DayMen in BlackKing RichardEmancipationDjango UnchainedThe Pursuit of HappynessSix Degrees of SeparationThe MatrixWild Wild WestAliSpeedPoint Break

Around the summer box office Furiosa: A Mad Max SagaThe Garfield MovieGarfieldInside Out 2Tenet

The Shyamalan shelf Lady in the WaterThe VillageTrap

Sean's weekend detours LonglegsMeIt's Such a Beautiful DayShogun AssassinDownton Abbey

In passing The Magnificent SevenAlbino AlligatorSicarioThe Stepford WivesUnforgivenM*A*S*HNorth by NorthwestThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the RingThe Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads

TV MartinGrey's AnatomyEuphoriaBetter Call SaulDownton Abbey (series)YellowstoneThe RiflemanDeadwoodThe Twilight ZoneThe Tonight Show

Web / YouTube Hot OnesRinger MoviesThe Rewatchables

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