Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

Before Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer teamed up to direct and produce one of the most overshot, masturbatory action films of all time (Bad Boys II), they created an action flick with a clear 90s feel that nonetheless retained a hint of violent 80s grit (Bad Boys The First).

Released in 1995, Bad Boys was the first step in Will Smith’s transition from Fresh Prince to, well, Hollywood God.  The 1995-1996-1997 progression from Bad Boys narcotic cop Mike Lowery to Independence Day’s alien face-punching pilot to Men in Black’s look-h0w-fast-I-can-run Agent Jay secured Will Smith as an honest-to-God superstar.

Martin Lawrence has not risen as far, nor did he attain his fame as quickly.  But he’s done all right for himself, moving from a sitcom career into action-comedies just like Will Smith.  Granted, for the past decade he’s largely been starring in shallow buddy movies far worse than Bad Boys, or going the Eddie Murphy route with by co-starring with Martin Lawrence, Martin Lawrence and Martin Lawrence in modern cross-dressing classics.  But at least, with Marcus Burnett in Bad Boys and Bad Boys II, he found a buddy cop team-up that really jived.  Lawrence is the perfect foil to Will Smith’s ultrasmooth, ultrabadass Mike Lowery, and he strikes a great balance between comic incompetent bumbling and serious action star territory.  Which is probably what makes the climax of Bad Boys so great; when Marcus’ whiny, mumbling persona is stripped away to reveal his grim-faced fuck-the-rules mentality, the energy is palpable.

Will Smith’s character is mostly flat (his duty: look cool, talk cool, act cool, be cool), but obviously entertaining.  So overall, Bad Boys is fun, the action is solid, the bad guy appropriately eastern European, and it holds onto just enough of that 80s action grunge to feel a little dangerous (it’s no Last Boy Scout, but, then, what is?).  But that energy Martin Lawrence brings at the end somehow grabs everything good about the film and condenses it into one moment, when the writing is quick and perfect, the acting serious, and the sound and cinematography mesh to project the raw power of the Porsche’s engine and the overwhelming need for speed.

I could watch all of Bad Boys again, waiting in anticipation of that one line.  And I probably will.  Because when Martin Lawrence starts mirandizing bitches from afar, you know it’s on.

Bayonetta brought two thoughts to the forefront of my mind as I spent a chunk of my weekend brutally slaying the divine.

1) Nobody can create an utterly incomprehensible, retarded story through whacked-out interpretations of religion like Japan can.

Maybe I’ve simply reached the boiling point; I’ve watched anime, played games where God or angels show up to give humanity some grief, and it never stuck in my craw quite like Bayonetta. Or maybe it’s just that Bayonetta does everything to the extreme.  ”Flock off, feather face?”  ”Don’t fuck with a witch?”  It’s like watching Barb Wire (although, to be fair, the writing is intentionally tongue-in-cheek, and Bayonetta’s voice actress couldn’t be as bad as Pamela Anderson even if she tried).

But then there’s the whole war between Heaven and Hell, thing, and these Lumen Sages and Umbra Witches and somehow they managed to kill each other off even though they seem pretty damn invincible, and then sometime they’re in Purgatorio (which may not be the same as the human world, exactly?) and sometimes poor Luka can see Bayonetta, and sometimes not.  For whatever reason, I could barely tolerate the camp factor, and was itching to skip about half the cutscenes in the game.  Even the “punch each other really fast” left me feeling pretty underwhelmed.  I enjoyed the over-the-top stuff in Devil May Cry 3, but something about Bayonetta simply didn’t resonate.

2) I feel like playing Ninja Gaiden II.

I have no problem admitting Ninja Gaiden II is a flawed game.  It’s got a lot of problems.  The level design early on is kinda bland; the camera is problematic (though I think Bayonetta’s frustrated me nearly as often).  The framerate’s not so solid.  Clearly, it was released before it was completely done.  This is all true.

What’s more, I can guarantee I had a far more frustrating experience playing Ninja Gaiden II than I did Bayonetta.  It’s a harder game (though not as hard as the far more defense-focused Ninja Gaiden.  That is a tough game.)  Bayonetta was a forgiving game; you could die without losing much progress, even during boss fights, and get all your health back to boot!  Okay, so your rating would suck, but I was never putting in the kind of time it would take to achieve Platinum medals, anyway.  Ninja Gaiden had cheap bosses, cheap enemies, and extremely frustrating moments.  This is all true.

And yet I enjoyed it so much more.  Why?  I think it has to do with focus.  Bayonetta is one of the few games I’ve ever played that gives me too much; the volume of button combos, the endless variations of the same two buttons, didn’t feel liberating so much as stifling.  I always felt a bit more in control with Ryu, a bit more balanced, more prepared to launch a devastating attack, dodge out of harm’s way, block the next incoming swipe.  Bayonetta had plenty of awesome mechanics, the Wicked finishers and the torture attacks being especially awesome to trigger after a vicious combo.

But the combat never had the same satisfaction as Ninja Gaiden II’s.  Of course, it’s mostly just stylistic preference — they handle differently, despite their core similarities.  But I think Bayonetta missed the mark of being an evolution for the fighting genre.  ”More” doesn’t equate to “new,” and even if Bayonetta is “More, more, more, more, and more,” it didn’t leave me wowed.

But maybe I just like ninjas.

1. LA Sucked in 1997

One of cinema’s oldest, most hilarious practices is to set a movie a few years in the future and predict that just a little ways down the road everything will, inexplicably, go all to hell. I still remember the beginning of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, in which a foreboding narration informs us that the year is 1991, and cats and dogs are totally extinct.

Predator 2, set a mere 7 years into the future at the time of its release, portrays Los Angeles as a warzone: desperate cops have firefights in the streets against gangs and drug lords. I guess we’ve cleaned the place up a bit in the past decade, huh?  And by we, I actually mean Danny Glover.

What can I say. The man can drive. He’s also good at massacring drug dealers, but that’s just not as original or cool, really.

It just gets better from here. Read the rest of this entry »