Bad Boys
dir. Michael Bay
Touchstone Pictures

Certainly, the production team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer were not a uniquely ’90s phenomenon — in fact, nothing could be more ’80s that the films they made, the most notable of which are Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop I & II and Top Gun. That dynasty led the two to an unprecedented deal with Paramount — a self-proclaimed Visionary Alliance — that stumbled out of the gate with 1990’s Days of Thunder, which had the double misfortune of grossing considerably less than any of their signature hits and being roundly dumped upon by both audiences and critics. Perhaps licking their wounds, the pair released their only comedy, the low-budget but quite funny actor’s bonanza The Ref, in 1994, which was not exactly the move Hollywood expected them to make after such a long drought.

But they were just keying up for their phenomenal 1995: May brought Crimson Tide, directed by old-guard mainstay Tony Scott, a mere month after Simpson and Bruckheimer released Bad Boys, directed by new new thing Michael Bay.

By “phenomenal,” nothing is meant except just that — Simpson and Bruckheimer were the kings of spectacle. Television and movies had long been engaged in a stylistic tug-of-war, and by the ’80s, this was manifesting itself most in an editing style whose rapidity was a counterpoint to cinema’s larger canvas. Of course, TV can only slowly get bigger, whereas film can easily co-opt any style introduced on the smaller screen; Simpson and Bruckheimer were at the forefront of this particular assimilation by hiring TV-commerical directors like Scott to helm their sensory-overload extravaganzas. But Scott was the ’80s. And Bay was so, so the ’90s.

Bay came from Propaganda Films, a stable of video and commercial directors that opened up its feature film arm the same year Bad Boys was released. A host of Propaganda’s in-house directors were now making movies, and it would be fair to say everything we consider ’90s style was either started or epitomized by them — Bay, Dominique Sena (Kalifornia), Antoine Fuqua (The Replacement Killers), Mark Pellington (Arlington Road), Simon West (The General’s Daughter) and, outshining them all, David Fincher (Fight Club).

Propaganda directors found far and away their greatest success working for Simpson and Bruckheimer — or, to be more accurate, Bruckheimer, as Simpson died in 1996. Their hyperkinetic style put even Scott’s hoariest excess to shame (that is, until Scott made Enemy of the State): Bay with Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon; West with Con Air and Sena with Gone in 60 Seconds.

Of course, these are all terrible movies, and Bad Boys is pretty much the worst (although Gone in 60 Seconds is in direct competiton). Imagine Will Smith and Martin Lawrence were a hip-hop duo called The Phallocentric Gunslingas and every cut on their album Where’s That Heroin? warranted a video; Bad Boys is the back-to-back presentation of all those videos, such as “86ing the Hooker,” “Plot Contrivance (I Need You Tonight),” “Protectin’ the Dumb White Girl,” “Misogyny (Ya Know It Does It For Me)” and “Capping the Propane Tanks Beneath the 747.” For the coup de grace, remove that imaginary hip-hop and replace it with lame, fourth-generation wisecracks and you’ve got Bad Boys.

It’s no surprise that Bad Boys turned a profit and that Bay and Bruckheimer continue to play to one another’s strengths — their next film is Pearl Harbor, which shares a screenwriter with the overblown Braveheart, features a trailer filled with shots cribbed from Saving Private Ryan, Titanic and Bay’s own Armageddon, and has the dubious distinction of having the largest greenlighted budget ever. Action movies have a hard enough time getting any respect, and Bruckheimer and Bay don’t help by continuing to churn out movies that are shameless in a way that would be astonishing ... if there had been a pretense of shame to begin with.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)