Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Until last week, the once fearsome heavyweight Mike Tyson, 57, was due to make a comeback seen as ill-advised even within the gaudy circus of professional boxing. Finally, a flaring ulcer caused his return to be postponed. But movies are not life, and fate has sent no medical emergency to stall another uncertain nostalgia trip: Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the fourth episode in the action franchise built on the easy chemistry of stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, now 55 and 59 respectively. Age is not just a number for Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence), the Miami narcotics cops first dispatched in 1995. “My grandad loved you,” a chipper Gen Z-er tells them, shortly before Burnett suffers a coronary. The near-death vision that follows sets in motion a shoot ’em up oddly fixated with the metaphysical. The plot turns on drug money and messages from beyond the grave. Meanwhile, comic interludes find the wild and crazy Burnett now hung up on reincarnation.In this life, Lawrence is still a raucous clown, happy to be seen with buttocks exposed to the ocean breeze. Settling back into their good-natured double act amid many nods to the first three movies, Smith remains the soulful smoothie. But of course, things have changed off-screen. The movie is the only project the star has filmed since his violent brush with Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars. Maybe you will find something noteworthy in a story whose dramatic stakes involve clearing the name of a once beloved figure, now in disgrace. Like Tyson, Smith has opted to return to a role he aged out of long ago. But if the boxing ring is famously lonely, a movie star can summon back-up. Here, it comes with the stylised vim of co-directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, mustering a huge volume of distraction. Every time you see something behind Smith’s eyes questioning his life choices, or wonder how many takes Lawrence took to nail a gag, another flaming helicopter or monster alligator is hurled onscreen. Then the camera pans back to the glittering Miami skyline: a place a man can be a boy forever. ★★★☆☆In UK and US cinemas now
