First Hit: Funny at the right times, but confusing gun battles took away from the story.
Will Smith as Detective Mike Lowery and Martin Lawrence as Detective Marcus Burnett can be engagingly funny together. And in many scenes, they hit that sweet spot by bringing outright out-loud laughter from the audience.
The background of this story is that these two have worked together for twenty plus years and, during this time, created havoc in the Miami Police Department by being both hasty in their actions and unconventional in their investigative methods. The directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah put this right up front in the opening scenes when they have the detectives drive through Miami at recklessly high speeds in Lowery’s 911 Porsche.
Burnett wants to retire but gets yanked away from fulfilling this dream when Lowery gets riddled with five bullets from Armando (Jacob Scipio), an assassin riding a motorcycle down one of Miami’s boulevards. In another early scene, we see Armando breaking his mother Isabel Aretas (Kate del Castillo) out of prison.
Isabel is intent on revenging an old score which resulted in the death of her husband. She asks Armando to kill all that had to do with her former husband's death. One of the aspects of Isabel that the audience is made aware of early is that she sees herself as a witch of some sort.
Directing the detective’s work over the years was Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano). After Lowery’s shooting, he brings on his newly formed AMMO (Advanced Miami Metro Operations) squad to solve the cases of all the current assassinations by using data and more conventional crime resolution techniques. This team is led by Lowery’s ex-girlfriend Rita (Paola Nunez).
Lowery won’t be held back and goes out to find his assassin and finally convinces Burnett to come out of retirement to help him one last time.
The rest of the film is about the slight conflicts between the AMMO squad and Lowery and Burnett’s tactics on finding and dealing with the assassins.
The AMMO team has some hilarious interactions with Lowery and Burnett, which helped set the stage. However, it is Marcu’s comments to Mike that gets the most laughs. One funny scene is when Mike names the color dye Mike uses to cover the gray in his goatee.
However, what didn’t work was the convoluted shootouts, two specifically, one in a warehouse garage and the other in an old hotel that was confusing. Just too much noise and shooting that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Smith is his typical smart-alecky competent self. As such, he is perfect for this role. Lawrence is terrific as the sidekick attempting to bring some sanity to his partner’s life. Pantoliano is solid as a police captain. Nunez is good as Lowery’s former girlfriend and leader of AMMO. Castillo is okay as the woman looking for revenge. Vanessa Hudgens, as Burnett’s all-knowing supportive wife, is terrific. Chris Bremner, Peter Craig, and Joe Carnahan wrote the screenplay. Directors Arbi and Fallah did a good job of bringing both action and comedy to bear.
Overall: There was nothing memorable about his film or story, but it was a fun experience.