Film / Bad Boys II

"Shit just got real."

"We ride together, we die together. Bad boys for life."

— Mike Lowrey

Bad Boys II is a 2003 Buddy Cop action film and the sequel to Bad Boys, directed like the first by Michael Bay, with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence returning to their previous roles.

Miami is being flooded with Ecstasy that's coming from Cuba through drug lord Johnny Tapia. Detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett are on the case, and are determined to bring the man to justice. Additional drama is provided by friction with the DEA, which counts Marcus' younger sister Sydney among its agents, and from Marcus possibly transferring out of the department, leaving Mike without his longtime partner.

Followed by Bad Boys for Life, released in 2020.

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Bad Boys II contains examples of:

• Actionized Sequel: There's more badass action in this bad boy (pun intended) than the previous film, as well as more laughs, too.
• Angrish: The Captain, upon learning the DEA is operating in Miami without consulting him, has a brief fit of apoplectic rage ("...CHRIST! FUCK!") before Marcus gets him to calm down.

• As Long as It Sounds Foreign:
  • At the harbor in Amsterdam, the guy on the phone is not speaking Dutch, as one would expect, but German with a strong English accent.
  • Mike orders the speedboat driver to shut the engine down. His Spanish words are "Cierre el barco," which would never be used in any context. They mean something like "close the boat's doors." Proper orders would be: Stop (deténgase), stop the boat (detenga el barco), or shut the engine down (apague el motor). A police officer in Miami would be aware of these forms, given the large Latino population.
• Ax-Crazy: Johnny Tapia. His idea of conducting a business deal is to have one member of the negotiating party chopped up in his mother's kitchen and the pieces stuffed into a tortilla bin. It's his idea of "leverage". If that does not work, he'll gun for their families.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety:
  • Mike, while Twerp Sweating Megan's date, is waving his gun around and pointing it at the date's face with his finger on the trigger. Not only is that extremely dangerous, it's also a felony - aggravated assault - which Mike and Marcus both know quite well.
  • Marcus has a moment of his own during the car chase in Mike's Ferrari. After shooting out of the passenger window, he ducks back inside... and quickly triggers an accidental burst into the dashboard. Any trained officer should have immediately taken their finger off the trigger as soon as their weapon came off target.
• Artistic License – History: Alpha 66 is a real group, but the film managed to downplay many of their unsavory acts, including attempted assassinations of Cuban officials and attacks against tourists in Cuba. By 2003, the group has been rendered inactive due to crackdown by the US government, and in real life it's unlikely they would have pulled off the attack on Tapia's mansion.
• Asshole Victim: Floyd, who doesn't die, but gets roughed up quite a bit; since he's a Klansman, it's hard to feel sorry for him.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Mike and Marcus do this after revealing themselves in the KKK rally in the opening action scene.
• Bad Boss: To the point where it's a wonder how anyone still works for Johnny. He yells at and berates his subordinates for issues as minor as having the "wrong" painting in his house and executes Roberto without blinking for what was an honest mistake.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Tapia's men use this tactic to clear out an office building in to set up an ambush on the protagonists - they burst into the offices shouting, "Undercover police!" and order everyone inside to leave. It works like a charm.
• Benevolent Boss: They drive him crazy, and he's not afraid to say so, but Captain Howard always has Marcus and Mike's back.
• Big Bad: Johnny Tapia.
• Blatant Lies: Johnny kills his second cousin for allowing Mike and Marcus to come into his home (thinking they are part of the Haitian gang) and when his mother comes to the window to ask what is that noise, Johnny tells her that his cousin just killed himself. By shooting himself dead center in the forehead. With Johnny not even trying to hide the gun in his hand. His mom buys it (or plays along) and says she will go order some flowers for the poor guy's family.
• Boom, Headshot!: Quite a few, most notably when Marcus shoots Johnny Tapias in the head, causing him to fall on a landmine.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: During the car chase, the police car drifts à la Initial D and knocks the camera over.
• Buffy Speak: Marcus is accidentally high on ecstasy when he and his partner go to ask their captain for a warrant. He is so out of it that Mike tries to send him on a fool's errand—call another detective and tell him... something...
  Mike Lowrey: Tell Vargas... tell him... that thing we said to tell him...
• Bullet Time: Occurs during the opening shootout with The Klan which ends with Marcus getting Shot in the Ass.
• Call-Back: After Marcus shoots Tapia dead, Mike starts yelling "that's how you're supposed to shoot, from now on, that's how you shoot!", calling back to climactic chase of the first film, where Mike told Marcus "that's how you're supposed to drive, from now on, that's how you drive!"
• The Cameo: By American football player Dan Marino; the boys steal the Caddy he was test driving and later remark that "he should definitely get this car — well, not this one, I'm gonna fuck this one up, but one just like it".
• Car Fu: Attempted by the Haitian bad guys in the freeway chase, by means of sending cars off a commandeered car carrier at Mike and Marcus' vehicle.
  Mike: These dudes are off the chain!
• Chase Fight: There's a car chase about half an hour in, with hordes of Mooks chasing after Marcus' undercover sister. With Mike and Marcus, as well as the rest of Miami's Finest chasing them, the resulting back-and-forth gunfire expends more ammo than most wars. The chase even comes to a halt partway through, replaced with a massive shootout before the chase resumes.
• Chase Scene: It's not a Michael Bay movie without one. It's also not a Michael Bay movie if something doesn't get trashed. Like a boat or a whole slum, for instance.
• Chewing the Scenery: Not always but when Jordi Mollà goes over the top he really goes over the top. You can tell he had fun.
• Cluster F-Bomb: More so than the first (a whopping 153 vs. the 18 of the first movie — and ironically, on the first movie Bay didn't liked the amount of times that it was used so he trimmed it down in editing).
• Coffin Contraband: Tapia smuggles money and Ecstasy in coffins, along with bodies.
• Cold Open: There's a scene before the title showcasing how Tapia's drug ring runs the gauntlet of sending drugs into the U.S.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Mike Lowry's mandated therapy is due to the time he "shot all them people at the airport". This is a reference to the first movie, where the climactic shootout took place at an airport.
  • The tall computer hacker who showed up as a convict in the first film is now a police consultant/employee.
• Cool Car: Lowrey's Ferrari 575M Maranello (Michael Bay's own 550 Maranello was used in the freeway chase sequence) and a 2003 Buick Blackhawk concept.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Johnny Tapia tells his mother that a thug killed himself. This would be plausible if the bullet hole in the side of his head rather than the front, and Johnny not holding a smoking gun even as he gives the excuse.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears:
  • A woman covers her sons' ears to keep them from hearing Mike and Marcus' inappropriate conversation which was accidentally broadcast around the TV store.
  • Near the climax, Johnny Tapia tells his daughter to cover her ears before dropping a Cluster F-Bomb at his workers.
• Cowboy Cop: Mike and Marcus, as usual. Lampshaded by their boss Capt. Howard:
  Capt: Howard: I can't believe you guys. Do you get up in the morning, call each other up - "Good morning, Marcus." "Good morning, Mike." "How you doin'?" "A'ight." "So, how are we going to fuck up the captain's life today?" "Gee, I don't know, I don't know... Ooh, look! Over there. Let's kill three fat people and leave them on the street?"
• Creator Cameo: Before they take Marino's car, Marcus attempts to commandeer a crappy hatchback driven by Michael Bay himself.
• Da Chief: Captain Howard, moreso than in the first film, as he's had to go through anger management therapy because of the main duo.
• Dark Messiah: Lampshaded when Johnny Tapia notices that the Jesus in The Last Supper mural that is being painted on his mansion looks like him... and then he orders the painters to change it because the context of the Last Supper is, in his own words, "fucking depressing".
• Deadly Remote Control Toy: The climactic Storming the Castle sequence begins with the good guys killing some of Johnny Tapia’s goons by driving a remote-controlled model truck loaded with C-4 right to where they are playing soccer and blowing it up.
  CIA Operator: [seeing several puzzled mooks through the truck’s camera] Sorry.
• Deadpan Snarker: Capt. Howard, during one of his calmer moments. Which is rare.
  "What is your job description?" (points at the two protagonists) "Yeah, you two. What is your job description? T.N.T. - Tactical Narcotics team. Keyword - tactical. It means 'finesse and subtlety in achieving the goal.' Tell me, gentlemen, what was subtle about your work today?" (said while next to a screen with an exploding car from the shootout Mike and Marcus were just in.)
• Denser and Wackier: While the original film was fun and silly on its own right, it did have tense action sequences and a truly threatening antagonist. This one plays up the laughs a lot more, and the villain easily shows himself as the Evil Is Hammy type.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The discussion between Mike and Marcus about the aftermath of Mike shooting Marcus in the butt immediately turns into one big gay joke.
• The Dragon: Roberto (until he outlived his usefulness), and then Carlos.
• Drop Dead Gorgeous: A gag involves the heroes discovering the corpse of a naked woman with gigantic breasts. Marcus hides underneath the sheet with the body and stares at her breasts while mooks search the area. Negative reviews of the film made particular mention of this scene's poor taste.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Marcus is deathly afraid of rats when he and Mike bug Johnny Tapia's mansion.
• Emergency Cargo Dump: While chasing down Syd, one of the vehicles used by the Haitians is a stolen car-carrier, chock-full of cars - it doesn't take long for the obvious conclusion to happen.
  Marcus: Do you see that?!
  Mike: [Suddenly dodging obstacles] They're throwing cars, how do I not see that?
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Johnny Tapia to his mama and daughter. Unfortunately to one of his mooks (who happens to be Tapia's second cousin and The Dragon up to that point) this love doesn't carries over to him.
• Evil Is Hammy: Any bad guy who appears in each movie has the tendencies to do this - most notably Johnny Tapia.
• Everyone Has Standards: Vargas and Reyes toss a couple of gay jokes at Marcus and Mike throughout the film, but they don't like it when the latter two toss back stereotypical Latino quips back at them (ex. after Marcus gets Shot in the Ass, they tell Mike to kiss it to make it better, Marcus angrily asks them if there isn't a Ricky Martin concert they should be getting at), calling it racist. Reyes also visibly doesn't likes the idea of hitting an elder woman even if she had tried to kill him with a sawed-off shotgun just two seconds before, but when Tapia's mother gets in the way, down she goes, and Reyes says he's sorry as he does so.
• False False Alarm: In the third act, the heroes toss dozens of cats and lizards into the bad guys' bungalo, until they decide turn off the alarms.
• Fan Disservice: The female with the very large breasts might have been straight Fanservice were she not a corpse in the morgue. Mike looks anyway.
• Flashed-Badge Hijack: Parodied, as an attempt to commandeer a rundown car leads Marcus to get yelled at and told to commandeer a better car. See also The Cameo.
• Fun with Acronyms: The Tactical Narcotics Team that Mike and Marcus are part of.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Mike and Marcus do a version of the bad cop worse cop bit combined with Twerp Sweating to a young boy who shows up to date Marcus' daughter. Marcus starts off with the boy as a Boyfriend-Blocking Dad, but things get much worse for him when Mike comes out, acting like the even more protective godfather of Marcus' daughter, all while pretending to be a con who just got out of jail, waves a pistol around and points it at the kid, and briefly makes references to Prison Rape while insinuating that the kid would be on the receiving end of it if he mistreats the girl at all. Suddenly Marcus seems positively sympathetic and reasonable by comparison.
• Guns Akimbo: Mike Lowrey has upgraded in badassery by getting a preference for carrying akimbo Glocks. Alexei carries dual Berettas on his drunken rampage through Tapia's house.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Johnny Tapia basically has two personality modes; seething anger and Unstoppable Rage. Meanwhile, Marcus and Captain Howard attend anger management classes, and it still doesn't keep them from yelling at the top of their lungs whenever something goes wrong.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Johnny Tapia, after receiving a headshot delivered by Marcus, drops himself on a minefield.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Prevalent.
  Mike: We ride together. We die together. Bad Boys for life.
• Historical Villain Downgrade: The film depicts Alpha 66 as a simple anti-Castro militia. The real Alpha 66 however is designated by many scholars and governments as a terrorist organization, which organized several assassination attempts on Fidel Castro and attacks against tourists in Cuba. Their unsanctioned, violent attacks embarrassed the US government enough to end funding to the organization and crack down on its activities.
• Hollywood Science: A truck carrying some cars is traveling at very high speed. One of the cars falls off but is still attached to the truck by a chain. It hits the ground and digs in, thus acting like an anchor. Said truck's rate of acceleration actually seems to increase!
• Home Porn Movie: Marcus and Mike play the tape of a suspect's camera at an electronics shop. After useful info, it cuts to home-recorded sex. And while trying to shut it off, they accidentally make all the TVs of the store play it. (The following "broadcast" is even worse/funnier).
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Not said directly to Mike, but Marcus makes it clear that if anybody used her sister for a one-night stand and/or made her cry, he would hunt and kill the guy without any mercy. Mike, who had been sleeping with Marcus' sister and wasn't completely sure of maintaining their relationship because of Marcus' overprotectiveness, is pretty nervous as a result.
• Innocent Innuendo: Mike and Marcus have a whole conversation that sounds like they had rough anal sex and Marcus can't have an erection anymore (and Mike is an asshole of a boyfriend). At least, that's what it sounds to the people hearing it. It's actually about Marcus still being traumatized from being Shot in the Ass (and thus can't have an erection). Even with context, Mike is still a bit of an asshole.
• Interrogation by Vandalism: Marcus and Mike get the location of the Haitian gang's hideout by doing this to Icepick's shop.
• Intimate Psychotherapy: "Dammit, Mike! You go to therapy to resolve your issues! Not bang your therapist!"
• Intoxication Ensues: While searching the mortuary for evidence, Marcus accidentally ingests two hits of ecstasy. Right before going to Captain Howard's house to get a warrant to go after Tapia. This is Played for Laughs at first, but later Howard has to call experts in order to figure out what to do to keep Marcus's brain from frying. Turns out, a cold shower works wonders.
• I Own This Town: Johnny Tapia is a firm believer of this trope as the druglord of Miami.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Mike is really excited when he meets Dan Marino.
• The Klan: Mike and Marcus shoot it out with a chapter of the Klan in the first major firefight.
• Ladykiller in Love: Mike, who is a renowned playboy, for Marcus' sister. Which causes problems when Marcus finds out about their relationship and that Mike had been keeping it from him.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": The final showdown against Tapias and Carlos happens on a minefield outside Guantanamo Bay, but no one actually steps on a mine. Syd throws her empty gun a mine right in front of Carlos, causing it to leap into the air and kill him. Marcus shoots Tapias in the head, and his corpse then lands on a mine causing his head to explode spectacularly.
• Lighter and Softer: This film has a slightly heavier body count (of named characters; the first film has four, this one has five), but besides this it surely plays the trope straight when compared to the first one. It has a lot more humor with a plot that has less stakes, and has the highly comical and more admirable Johnny Tapia to replace the irredeemable Fouchet. The film also has more vibrant and saturated colors and lighting compared to the original, which would later become a stable across Michael Bay's Transformers flicks.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: Marcus suffers a bout of this after getting Shot in the Ass by Mike during the first shootout of the movie. He only gets better after accidentally ingesting some X (the drug whose traffic the two are trying to fight) during a trip to the morgue, leading to one of the most hilarious scenes in the movie.
  Marcus: (when he notes he's finally gotten an erection) Tell the wife I am on the way.
• Looks Like Jesus: Johnny Tapia. Lampshaded by the man's daughter when she notices a painting of the Last Supper that is being painted on his Cuban mansion has a Jesus that resembles him... and then tells Tapia about what the Last Supper means. Tapia orders the painters to get rid of the painting.

  Johnny Tapia: (whistles to the painters) Hey! You know what this is? THIS IS FUCKING DEPRESSING!!!

• Manly Tears: Marcus sheds these after Sydney is taken hostage, and government officials refuse to help her. Mind you that this is a character played by Martin Lawrence...
• Misplaced-Names Poster: One poster for the film has the names of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence◊ swapped.
• Mistaken for Gay: At the electronic store Mike and Marcus discusses Marcus butt injury, while being incidentally broadcast throughout the store, customers miss the context and thought they were talking about anal sex.
• Moe Greene Special: Mike gives one to an unfortunate gangbanger that tries to peek through a bullet hole.
• Moral Myopia:
  • Johnny Tapia got Alexei to comply with his deal by threatening to rape his wife and go after his son (when showing Alexei the dismembered corpse of his business partner didn't work) and later kidnapped Syd, Marcus' sister, holding her hostage, even though Johnny murdered his own second cousin in cold blood for unwittingly allowing Mike and Marcus into his mother's house and putting her at risk (mistaking Mike and Marcus for gangbangers). He cares greatly for his own family, but will brutalize anyone else's family if said person doesn't do what he wants.
  • Floyd repeatedly complains that Mike and Marcus are violating his human rights when they appropriate him from jail. Floyd is a Klansman - the KKK being a group dedicated to denying black people their human rights, among other things.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Marcus does not approve of Mike dating Sydney, though it's less to do Sydney being his sister and more to do with Mike's well-earned reputation.
• Never Going Back to Prison: During the much discussed Twerp Sweating scene, Mike pretends to be a Just Got Out of Jail ex-con who declares that he's not going back to jail.
• No Warrant? No Problem!: By entering Johnny Tapia's house illegally, all the evidence Mike and Marcus collected are useless in a court of law.
• Not What It Looks Like: Mike and Marcus head into a side room at an electronics store to have a private talk about the fact that Mike had accidentally shot Marcus in the ass earlier in the film. Unfortunately, there is an active camcorder in the room, which transmits their talk to the entire store. Without context, everybody in the store thinks that Mike and Marcus are gay. As they step out of the room, they get accosted by a Madea-esque woman telling them that they "need Jesus".
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Tapia convinces Alexei to sign over his business to him by having his bodyguard brought back to him chopped up in pieces in a drumcan, with the implied threat that he can either sign the paper or be next.
• Oh, Crap!: The duo have this after realizing their post-"shot-in-the-ass" conversation in the tech store was being transmitted on a TV in the main lobby.
• Only in Miami: The heroes are a couple of cowboy cops working for the Miami PD.
• Orbital Shot: When Tapia calls the heroes to inform them that he holds Syd hostage, the camera does a dramatic Orbital Shot as one of them delivers the punchline "Shit just got real."
• Papa Wolf:
  • Marcus does not take kindly to the fact that one of his kids is going out on a date and makes it clear that if her date gets fresh with her (hell, if the kid brings her back too late) he's going to kill him. Being Mike's god-child as well, he and Marcus decide to do a pretty scary Twerp Sweating tag-team.
  • The only really redeemable thing about Johnny Tapia is his love for his family. He blows away his second cousin because he believed Mike and Marcus were part of the Haitian gang and thus his snafu allowed some equally ruthless men into his home, and on the third act when his (pretty chubby) daughter says that a friend of hers told her she looked like a supermodel and a nearby mook snickers, Tapia gives him a Death Glare and tells him if he ever does it again his balls will be coming off.
• Parking Garage: Syd's undercover meeting takes place at the top of a parking garage. Things quickly turn sour and it develops into a shootout and car chase.
• Plausible Deniability: A bunch of Cowboy Cops, SWAT and DEA agents are about to sneak into Cuba to hit the home of a drug dealer who kidnapped one of the cops' sister. The CIA has been wanting an excuse to take him down, so naturally they give them a few nudges in the right direction. That's not a Black Op, it's Family Business!
• Product Placement: The Cadillac, coincidentally the same one used in The Matrix Reloaded, which co-stars Will Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett.
• Punk in the Trunk: Lowrey and Burnett forget they drive a suspect KKK member in their trunk. He starts to thrash about when the protagonists are being admonished by their captain for their last mess-up.
  Captain: Running people over is not enough for you? Now you're into kidnapping?
• Rank Up: When Marcus shows his badge to the exterminators in order to commandeer some of their equipment so they can get into Tapia's mother's house, if you freeze the picture you can read Marcus' badge clearly. He is a Lieutenant with the Miami Police Department. In the original, when Marcus holds his badge up to the peephole for Julie to look at, you can see it says "Sergeant", so clearly, in the intervening eight years, Marcus was promoted.
• Real Stitches for Fake Snitches: Played with. The protagonist detectives get a man connected to an ecstasy-smuggling ring to talk by taking a picture with him and threatening to show it to his fellow criminals. To make things worse for him, both detectives are black and the man is a member of the KKK.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Okay, so apparently our Bad Boys happen to have a friend, who happens to have a brother, who happens to be a commander in an anti-Castro militia named Alpha 66, who happen to have enough guns and bombs to assault a fortified mansion in Cuba. In fact, there really is an Alpha 66, and they really have stocked up enough firepower to launch a big hit-and-run in Cuba, as they're storing up for an eventual invasion.
• Refuge in Audacity: The film opens with our two black leads crashing a KKK rally. And spends the rest of its running time trying to top it.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: And how. Marcus and Mike take this trope to its logical conclusion to rescue Syd after she's captured by Tapia. The two receive help from the entire TNT squad (who are implied to be former U.S. Special Forces) Syd's DEA pals, a "care package" from the CIA who turns out to be former Delta Force specializing in intel and demolitions, and some extra support from the anti-Castro Cuban underground militia. The group mount a clandestine raid into Cuba, annihilate Tapia's entire compound, extract Syd, and burn an entire cocaine manufacturing favela to the ground just by driving through it. It's bad enough to give Tapia the mother of all Villainous Breakdowns before Marcus plants a bullet in his head.
• Rule of Three: There are three "Oh, shit"s in 12 seconds in the scene where the duo visits Captain Howard's house.
• Ruthless Foreign Gangsters:
  • The Cuban drug lord Johnny Tapia, who will kill his own cousin without hesitation for failure and his idea of "negotiating" with The Mafiya is to kill one of the Russians that came to his house, cut him to pieces and stuff him in a tortilla container, show the pieces to the other Russian (who is the dead guy's cousin, by the way) and threaten the man's family for good measure.
  • Not that the Russians are any nicer. The prologue ends with Alexei noticing some guy OD'ed on ecstasy in his club's dance floor and telling the guy he's talking on the phone that he needs to hang up because he needs to clean the mess and ordering his thugs to drop the dying man someplace away from the club.
  • The Jamaicans have no problem whatsoever getting in a massive shootout with the police in broad daylight in a major street and causing a demolition-derby chase in a turnpike in the attempt to steal a lot of money from a rival gangster.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: Alexei, the Russian gangster, loses everything to Johnny and returns in the first climax on a drunken rampage of revenge only to have a bullet storm unleashed upon him by the police.
• Sassy Black Woman: As if the electronics store incident wasn't awkward enough...
  Indignant Mother: In front of my babies, you've got porno and homo shows up in here? What kind of freak-ass store is this?! (Mike and Marcus walk by) Mmm... and YOU two motherfuckers need Jesus. (beat) Cover your ears, baby.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Syd is kidnapped by the drug lord and taken to Cuba. Mike and Marcus intend to go rescue her themselves, but are then aided by a loose-knit group of law enforcement agents who decide to risk violating international law.
  DEA Agent Snell: We don't know you, but you look like you're about to do something stupid. I'm in.
  • Which the CIA gets wind about and decides to make into an impromptu Black Op with a little discreet assistance.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: In the poster for the movie, it's Martin Lawrence this time who's taking aim.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Downplayed — a significant part of the final act takes place in Cuba.
• Shame If Something Happened: After presenting the remains of Alexei's business partner, Tapias persuades him to sign over his businesses by threatening to go after his wife and son.
• Shot in the Ass: At the end of the first shootout, Mike, who is using two guns, accidentally shoots his partner Marcus in the ass while trying to get the last KKK guy who had gotten the drop on him. Marcus suffers problems in the bedroom as a result of the ass-shot, and is only cured of his dysfunction accidentally ingesting some X (the drug whose traffic the two are trying to fight) during a trip to the morgue, leading to one of the most hilarious scenes in the movie.
• Storming the Castle: Mike and Marcus and a team of volunteers storm Tapia's mansion in Cuba to rescue Syd. They have to hurry, though, as Tapia has friends in the Cuban government, who will send the Cuban army after them.
• Stuff Blowing Up: It wouldn't be a Michael Bay movie without at least a few gratuitous explosions.
  • The movie ends with Mike, Marcus, and several other TNT officers going to Cuba to rescue Marcus' sister who the Big Bad has kidnapped... where they wreck a shantytown/crack lab on the way there. This culminates in a climax on the US Navy base, where the big bad gets blown in half by a land mine.
  • Before that they blow up a mansion — a real mansion that the owners didn't want and figured some lucky director ought to have some fun with it.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Mike getting blocked from having the Miami PD reimburse the damage Marcus caused to his glove box with the sub-machine gun during the prior shootout.
  Mike Lowery: Captain, is it possible we can discuss potential reimbursement...
  Capt. Howard: The department doesn't cover personal property, that's why we drive police cars.
  • Marcus accidentally takes Ecstasy shortly before he and Mike head to a meeting with Captain Howard. They try to conceal it, like sitcom characters in a wacky situation. Howard figures out something is wrong in less than three minutes. When Mike tells Howard, he doesn't get mad, he's concerned. He just calls Poison Control, which says to keep Marcus cool to avoid brain damage.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Shooting the Big Bad in the head wasn't enough. He has to fall on a landmine.
• Those Two Guys: The two Hispanic detectives Vargas and Reyes.
• Time for Plan B: Mike comes up with one of these toward the end, which consists of driving what looks like a Humvee through a mansion.
  Mike: Plan B did not have this big-ass gun in it!
  Marcus: You call this Plan B?! What does "B" stands for? "Bullshit"!
  Mike: Do you wanna drive?!
  Marcus: Yeah, pull over by the motherfucker with the machine guns!
• Took a Level in Badass: Both of the main characters, especially Mike.
• Translation Trainwreck: A Chinese bootleg has a lot of random "Damn"s scattered around, an instance of "Do Not Want", "I love your father", and many more hilarious butcheries of the original dialogue that don't belong in any sense of the movie.
• Tunnel King: When Johnny Tapia flees to Cuba with Syd, agent Vargas mentions his crazy cousin Tito who helps by using his network of tunnel diggers to infiltrate Tapia's guarded mansion.
• Twerp Sweating: Marcus' daughter is being picked up at her home by her boyfriend Reggie. Despite specific instructions from his wife to not go into the overprotective "Her daddy is a policeman, so watch out!" routine, he immediately proceeds to lay down the law punctuated with threats of violence. The scene then Crosses the Line Twice when his partner Mike pretends to be a family friend who just got out of prison, and chimes in with his own outright psychotic threats, including pointing a gun at Reggie's face and then pretending he will rape him if Reggie exceeds the dating boundaries:
  Mike Lowery: You ever made love to a man?
  Reggie: (horrified) No.
  Mike Lowery: You want to?
  Reggie: (almost crying) No sir...
• Unkempt Beauty: Marcus and Mike threaten the hell out of Marcus' daughter's date Reggie. Cluster F-Bomb and N-Word Privileges ahoy. Mike threatening the poor boy with anal sex. Mike then pulls a gun on him. Reggie looks like he's about to cry by the time Marcus' daughter comes to the door. It must be seen to be appreciated. Even better, the poor boy playing him had no idea what he was in for. The fear is quite genuine.
• Villainous Breakdown: Tapia has one when the team led by Marcus and Mike blow his mansion up.
• Visual Pun: When Mike and Marcus pose as exterminators to infiltrate Tapia's mansion, Marcus stumbles upon a pair of rats mating and is amazed by it, immediately calling Mike to tell him. In other words, they witnessed two rats fucking while they themselves were engaged in ratfucking.
• Vodka Drunkenski: Alexei meets up with Johnny Tapia and gets presented with his deceased colleague (in a bucket). Later on, when Mike and Marcus assault the mansion, Alexei shows up as well absolutely fucking wasted calling himself the "Russian Grim Reaper of Death" and proceeds to lay waste to half of the mansion's illegal drug traffickers himself before trying to outdraw a platoon of SWAT team members who tell him to lay down his arms.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: When Mike and Marcus are investigating the morgue for evidence, Marcus accidentally knocks the top of a corpse's head off, exposing its brain, which causes him to vomit.
• Would Hurt a Child: He never does it on-screen but Tapia has no problem threatening the young son of a drug dealer to gain leverage over him. Given how Ax-Crazy Tapia is it likely was not a bluff.
• You Are Not Alone: See Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! above.
  Mike: We ride together, we die together. Bad boys for life.
• You Have Failed Me: Johnny Tapias shoots the henchman who let Mike and Marcus into his mother's house when they were posing as exterminators.

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