Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) have been cop buddies for over two decades. Marcus wants to retire and settle down with his family, but Mike wants to keep working. The nefarious crime boss Isabel (Kate Del Castillo) tells her son, Armando (Jacob Scipio), to hunt down and kill Mike. After he shoots and injures Mike while on a motorcycle and wearing a mask, Marcus and Mike team up to find him and to avenge the attempted murder. 

      Bad Boys for Life the third film in the Bad Boys trilogy is yet another mindless action thriller that's essentially a B-movie with a big budget. The plot doesn't really matter as long as it's entertaining and suspenseful, but the suspense wanes very quickly because the shallow screenplay by Chris Bremner, Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan introduces the identity of the masked shooter too early and makes his motivations very clear from the beginning. The rapport between Mike and Marcus lacks wit although it does get some credit for at least trying to create some chemistry between the leads. The main problem is that the screenplay tries too hard to be funny and the jokes don't land, so the chemistry and rapport feels contrived. There's one mildly humorous moment just when the film cuts to Marcus crying at a wedding that leads you to believe at first that it's Mike's funeral. Anyone who's ever seen a Hollywood blockbuster would know that killing off one of the leads early on rarely happens, so that scene doesn't work as effectively as it could have because there's no way that the filmmakers would allow for Mike die in the first act.

      Do you really need a see a visual gag with Marcus touching a bump on someone's head over and over before referring to him as The Elephant Man? That punchline would've been much funnier without Marcus repeatedly touching the bump beforehand thereby milking the irreverent joke until it's no longer funny. A twist in the third act seems more like a cheap way to add complexity and poignancy to the plot, but the performances and the screenplay aren't strong enough to allow those emotions to resonate. Too little rings true, especially how Mike manages to heal so quickly after he was shot. If only the filmmakers were to have treated at least one character as a human being instead of just as a plot device, but that seems like too much to ask for in a Hollywood blockbuster (the rare exception to that is the surprisingly tender Bumblebee). When it comes to exposition, the screenwriters fail yet again because there's too much of it and it's handled in a way that takes away from the film's narrative momentum while leaving nothing to the imagination.

      Although the filmmakers don't trust the audience's imagination, intelligence or emotions, they do, unfortunately, trust the audience's patience by having a running time of 123 minutes. If this were a 90-minute action thriller, it would've been much more leaner and entertaining, but at over 2 hours, it overstays its welcome and becomes exhausting after the 90-minute mark. On top of that, none of the action scenes are exhilarating enough on a palpable level nor well choreographed. Some of the editing feels choppy and it's hard to see what's happening during the action scenes at times. Do you really need to see so many long and lengthy shoot-outs? They could've been easily trimmed which would've made the running time much more palatable. Bad Boys for Life is ultimately an overlong, dumb and shallow action thriller with not enough suspense, thrills and laughs nor any chemistry between the leads.