YMMV / Bad Boys for Life

• Evil Is Cool: Armando Aretas, The Heavy of the film is a badass Cold Sniper able to expertly take out his targets without collateral. Armando is also a Noble Demon and has a moral code against hurting innocents, which adds to the appeal.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The subplot about Mike's Cowboy Cop style of policing being outdated became this when less than a year later, the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others from police brutality lead to the largest racial equality protest in American history and in particular widespread calls for the police to be defunded and overhauled. Mike's Cowboy Cop antics greatly resemble the brutal tactics that are being looked at and condemned. The film avoids being this entirely thanks to the film presenting Mike's style of policing as flawed, ineffective, and in need of change, contrasting AMMO's more passive and 'friendly' approach, and the fact Mike's Character Development has him abandoning these tactics and talking down Armando rather than shooting him.
• Magnificent Bastard: Isabel Aretas and Armando Aretas are a pair of Mexican criminals seeking to avenge the fall of the Aretas cartel. While in prison, Isabel murders one of the guards and escapes after posing as the guard she killed. After escaping, Isabel hands Armando a list of law enforcement and other officials to kill, all of whom helped dismantle the cartel and put Isabel in prison. After wounding Mike Lowery, Armando spends several months assassinating the officials, swiftly eluding the police after each kill. To further torment Mike psychologically, Armando posts a video of him shooting Mike onto the dark web and later murders Captain Howard while they're both attending a basketball game. Once Mike and his partner Marcus try to sneak into Isabel's palace to confront her and Armando, Isabel anticipates their assault and immediately captures them, before attempting to kill them both.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The fact that this film ended up the highest grossing movie of 2020 at the domestic box office thanks to the huge mitigating factor of the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down movie theaters after just two and half months.
  • When a fourth movie was announced, a lot of people joked they should have saved this title for the next movie and called it Bad Boys 4 Life.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The film's critical reception is significantly better than the first two, a Certified Fresh 77% Rotten Tomatoes approval aggregate to the respective 42% and 29% for the previous films. Industry writers credited this as the reason the film nearly doubled its opening weekend projection.
  Rotten Tomatoes critics' consensus: Loaded up with action and a double helping of leading-man charisma, Bad Boys for Life reinvigorates this long-dormant franchise by playing squarely to its strengths.

---