With the release of ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ soon
upon us, it’s time for another directorial retrospective. Today, we’ll be looking
at the films of director Michael Bay. And I’m not going to lie… this is going
to be a rather ‘interesting’ retrospective mainly because of the typical critical
reception towards the majority of Bay’s films. For you see, while a lot of them
have been pretty successful at the box office, they haven’t had the same
success with critics. If you look at his filmography on Rotten Tomatoes, only
one film has earned a ‘fresh’ Tomatometer score and I’m pretty sure that many
people like to refer to him as either one of the worst directors working today
or one of the worst directors period (possibly both, if not the worst). But you
might be surprised to find that… I’m not really one of them. Believe it or not,
I actually do like most of Michael Bay’s films. Granted, I don’t think any of
them are really ‘great’ films but to his credit, none of his films are ever boring.
They’re ‘popcorn’ flicks and sometimes that’s all that I’m looking for in a
movie. As for that whole thing about him being one of the worst directors out
there… I feel that it’s a little overblown because honestly there are FAR worse
directors than him out there. Anyway, this will be a two-part retrospective and
today we’ll be looking at all of Bay’s films minus a certain trilogy of films
that he did which I’ll be covering next time.
BAD BOYS (1995)
Like a lot of directors, Michael Bay started out small
before he went big; his first film, ‘Bad Boys’, is his lowest budgeted film to
date at only $19 million. Since then, he’s only made two films under $100
million; ‘The Rock’ ($75 million) and ‘Pain and Gain’, the latter being the
lowest budgeted film Bay has made since ‘Bad Boys’ at only $26 million, which
definitely highlights the fact that Bay has continued to go bigger and bigger
since his directorial debut. As for ‘Bad Boys’, Bay’s first film mainly works
for one reason; its two leads, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. The two of them
have excellent camaraderie and great comedic timing. It also helps that they
improvised a lot of their dialogue (which you can partially credit to Bay
because he had suggested that they do so… definitely one of the smartest
directorial moves Bay has ever made, even if that may not exactly be saying
much). I will admit that there’s not really much else that I can say about this
film; I mean, it’s really just your basic buddy cop movie and aside from Smith
and Lawrence there’s not really anything else that stands out. Still, this is
an entertaining popcorn flick that kick started the career of Michael Bay and overall
I’d say it’s worth checking out.
Rating: 3.5/5
THE ROCK (1996)
Following the fairly solid success of ‘Bad Boys’ at the box
office ($141 million on a $19 million budget), Bay teamed up again with
producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (the latter of whom Bay would
continue to work with until ‘Bad Boys II’… this was Simpson’s last film before
he died) for ‘The Rock’ which is currently, at the time I’m writing this, the
highest rated film that Bay has ever made. On Rotten Tomatoes, it’s the only
film of his with a fresh Tomatometer score. Sure enough, it is definitely one
of Bay’s best films. His fast-paced style of action certainly works well for
this film and sure, like a lot of his movies, the writing may not be the ‘best’
but the film is so entertaining that it’s easy to ignore it. It’s definitely
one of those cases of movie ‘escapism’ and I believe that’s something that Bay
is really good at. This film also benefits from having Sean Connery in the lead
role of John Mason, a British Spy who is recruited by the government to deal
with a hostage situation taking place on Alcatraz, because he is the only one
who ever escaped the presumably ‘inescapable’ prison. I mean, let’s face it…
he’s the best part of the movie. He has a terrific screen presence, is a total
badass in this, and heck I can even see a bit of James Bond still in him, which
isn’t that farfetched considering that his character in this film was a former
MI6 agent.
But including Connery, this film does have a pretty solid
trio of leads. Connery and Nicholas Cage (who plays Stanley Goodspeed, a
chemical weapons expert who is sent on the mission along with Connery’s
character) have a good back-and-forth interplay and Cage certainly brings his
usual… shall I say ‘eccentric’ style of acting to this movie. As for Ed Harris
as the main villain General Frank Hummel, I actually really liked how he wasn’t
a straight-up bad guy; he was just a disenchanted war veteran who was
frustrated with the government for not compensating for the families of the
soldiers who died while under his command, and while he does lead the takeover
of Alcatraz, he wouldn’t go as far as to kill innocent civilians. All of this
makes the character a pretty interesting villain. So overall, with some
excellent action sequences (the shootout between Hummel’s forces and the Navy
SEALs in one of Alcatraz’s shower rooms is probably the best action sequence in
the entire movie), a great score by Hans Zimmer, and overall just a good sense
of fun, ‘The Rock’ is definitely a stand-out in Michael Bay’s filmography. In
fact, I’d say it’s the one that I would generally recommend the most out of all
of Bay’s films.
Rating: 4.5/5
ARMAGEDDON (1998)
While ‘Bad Boys’ was a pretty solid commercial success when
it came out, ‘The Rock’ was an even bigger hit at the box office and it
basically established Michael Bay’s reputation as a high-profile action
director in Hollywood. That financial success continued with ‘Armageddon’,
which ended up being the highest grossing movie of 1998, even though it
actually opened two and a half months after another asteroid film, ‘Deep
Impact’ was released. ‘Deep Impact’ was considered to be more scientifically
accurate but ‘Armageddon’ was more financially successful and like a lot of
Bay’s films it got a generally mixed to negative reaction though from what I
keep hearing, this is one of those films that some actually like but don’t
really want to admit it. Likewise, I too think that this movie’s actually
pretty good. I mean, obviously this movie’s premise is fairly stupid; a team of
oil drillers are trained to be astronauts and are sent into space to destroy a
massive asteroid before it hits Earth. Even Michael Bay admitted that this
premise is unrealistic; also, NASA uses this film as part of their training
program by having new managers looking for errors in the film. I haven’t seen
‘Deep Impact’ but I can already tell that that movie clearly must be more
scientifically accurate.
Still, the movie manages to be pretty entertaining even
though its main premise is technically impossible to do. Like ‘The Rock’, it
has a pretty darn good performance from its lead actor, in this case Bruce
Willis, as well as some pretty good supporting members as well like Steve
Buscemi, Will Patton, and Ben Affleck (yes, this is a case during Affleck’s
pre-directing days where he did do a pretty good job… we’ll get to his next
role in a Michael Bay film in a bit). And as for the finale where Willis’
character Harry says goodbye to his daughter Grace before sacrificing himself
to save the world… I’m not afraid to admit that I was shedding tears during
this scene because it’s a legitimately poignant moment and the fact that this
is occurring in a big-budget sci-fi action movie is pretty impressive. So in
the end, ‘Armageddon’ isn’t the smartest movie ever made, and even the
filmmakers know that. Also if I had any complaints, sometimes Bay’s
fast-editing gets a bit too crazy, particularly in the scene where the shuttle
Independence crashes onto the asteroid, where the editing is so fast that it’s
actually pretty hard to tell what’s happening. But overall it is still a pretty
entertaining movie that manages to work around the unrealistic premise. I know
I keep bringing it up, but again, this is another case of good old fashioned
Hollywood escapism.
Rating: 4/5
PEARL HARBOR (2001)
As I’ve already noted, Michael Bay’s films have rarely fared
well with critics and, in some cases, audiences for that matter. Sure, a lot of
his films have been big hits at the box office but I have the feeling that most
of the time, audiences aren’t too positive about his films. In that sense, the two
films that are probably the most hated of his amongst critics and audiences are
‘Pearl Harbor’ and ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’. In terms of which one
is the more reviled one, I think the edge has to go to ‘Pearl Harbor’ because
really, regardless of whether or not you actually liked ‘Revenge of the
Fallen’, it’s just a movie based on a toy franchise whereas ‘Pearl Harbor’ is
based on an actual event in U.S. history; the bombing of the Pearl Harbor naval
base in Hawaii by the Japanese Navy on December 7, 1941. So in that case, it
can be argued that this film got a bit more critical bashing than Transformers
2 but… against my better judgment, I’m just going to put it out there. I don’t
hate this film… in fact I actually kind of like it. I never use the term
‘guilty pleasure’ because I’m not shy when it comes to the films that I like,
but in this case, I guess you can sort of say it’s a ‘guilty pleasure’ of mine
considering that I certainly must be in the extreme minority on this.
Now first off I just want to address this film’s main
problem; for a movie that’s based on a true event, it instead puts its main
focus on a trio of fictional characters and the love triangle that emerges
amongst them rather than those who were actually there when it happened and
also there are definitely a few historical inaccuracies in this film. Now,
technically this was also how James Cameron’s ‘Titanic’ was too, but that film
did a much better job at letting us get to know those who were really on the
ship before it crashed even though the film still kept the main focus on a
fictional couple and to be frank, the writing for the romance in that film was
done much better there than in this movie. While I’m not saying that this love
story is that bad, at the same time it’s still rather clichéd at certain
points. It’s simply the scenario where two friends find themselves both in love
with the same person and at one point their friendship is threatened when one
of them learns about this. Plus, the main character Rafe (Ben Affleck, who to
his credit manages to make the most out of what he had to work with; at the end
of the day, he’s not that bad in this (or at least not as bad as a lot of
people claim he is) comes off a bit too much like a selfish jerk at a certain
point in a crucial part of the film after being absent for almost an hour of
screen-time.
Now for the record, everything’s fine in regards to him in
the first act of the film; he falls in love with Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale, who
manages to come off of this with the best performance of the three leads), the
nurse who let him keep his wings despite his condition (dyslexia) but then he heads
off to Britain to fight in the war after being accepted by the Eagle Squadron.
He is then presumed to be killed in action and months later Evelyn falls in
love with Rafe’s best friend Danny (Josh Hartnett, who’s kind of in the same
field as Affleck in terms of their performances). It is then revealed that Rafe
survived and when he returns to Evelyn and learns that she’s now with Danny,
what does he do? He complains about it... even though it’s really not Danny and
Evelyn’s fault because they thought he was dead. Plus, as noted in the film, it
took quite a bit of time for him to let them know that he was alive. Well… to
his credit, Rafe at least manages to redeem himself by the end of the film and
the camaraderie between Affleck and Hartnett in the scenes where they’re not
fighting with each other is actually pretty good.
So even though the film doesn’t have the right focus and in
some areas is fairly historically inaccurate, there are still some good things
about it. For one thing, as everyone has already pointed out, the actual
sequence of the attack on Pearl Harbor is phenomenal. This clearly wasn’t an
easy sequence to film and at the end of the day it turns out to be the
highlight of the entire film so all of that hard work clearly paid off. The
three main leads are okay, but this film really benefits more from the
supporting cast, which includes Dan Aykroyd, Mako, and Jon Voight. There has
been a lot of debate over whether or not this film is ‘offensive’ towards those
who were at Pearl Harbor on that ‘day of infamy’. As for me, I don’t think it’s
nothing ‘too bad’. Having watched some of the behind-the-scenes videos, I can
see that Bay and his crew were trying to do their best to respect those who had
witnessed the attack firsthand… you have to give them credit for that… they at
least tried. But as I said before, this movie did not really give these real
people the proper treatment they deserve by having the film focus on fictional
characters instead of those who were really there when it happened. So overall,
I’m not saying that ‘Pearl Harbor’ is a perfect movie. But at the same time, I
found it to be entertaining even with a 3-hour runtime; heck, even the scenes
that weren’t related to the actual attack kept my interest. So overall, I don’t
think this film is ‘as bad’ as what a lot of people are saying.
Rating: 3.5/5
BAD BOYS II (2003)
Now there’s some irony to be found when it comes to what I think
about the 2003 sequel to ‘Bad Boys’, ‘Bad Boys II’. From what I’ve heard
online, while this film has gotten the typical critical reaction that Bay’s
films usually get, I’m finding that even some of Bay’s biggest critics actually
sort of like this film. Well, guess what... this is the ONE Michael Bay film that
I don’t like. Now, let me start by saying that despite what I just said, I don’t
‘hate’ this film because I do feel like there are some good things in it. Once
again, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are great together, this film has some
really nice action sequences, and this film’s story is thankfully not as ‘standard’
as the previous film was. But you know some of the biggest complaints that a
lot of people have with most of Bay’s films, like for them being too long or
them having humor that’s too crude? Well for some odd reason I’ve never been
bothered by that in any of his films… except for this one. This film is nearly
two and a half hours long… it could’ve been trimmed. As for the humor… well, to
put it quite simply, this film has a scene where two rats are f***ing (and to
those who haven’t seen this film yet, no you didn’t read that wrong… rats
f***ing!). I don’t think I need to say anything more after that. I mean, I’ll
give ‘Bad Boys II’ credit for being an entertaining film (again, no one can
make an entertaining action film quite like Michael Bay), but out of all of Michael
Bay’s films, this one is my least favorite.
Rating: 2.5/5
THE ISLAND (2005)
To date, ‘The Island’ is Michael Bay’s least successful film
to date from a box office perspective. It isn’t the lowest-grossing of his
films, but this film was made on a $126 million budget… and only grossed around
$36 million in the United States apparently due to poor marketing. Had it not
been for the international box office, this could’ve been a major flop but it
at least managed to make its budget back. What does this all mean? Well, it
means that I think that ‘The Island’ is a bit underrated. Now I don’t think
that it’s necessarily Bay’s best film but of course would expect from a Michael
Bay film, it keeps your interest and has some really nice action
sequences/visuals. It’s also pretty well-acted from a cast that includes Ewan
McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Sean Bean, and Steve Buscemi. This is sort of
like the first ‘Bad Boys’ where there’s not much else I can say about this film,
but if you haven’t seen it yet, I actually kind of recommend it. No, it’s not
the smartest film out there (as is, let’s face it, pretty much every Michael
Bay film), but it’s still pretty entertaining.
Rating: 4/5
PAIN AND GAIN (2013)
Now I had previously reviewed this film back when it came
out in April 2013 and I originally gave it a score of 3.5/5 and I have to admit
that, for a while, I was actually this close to listing it as one of my
‘disappointments’ for the year because I was sort of looking forward to it and
while I didn’t think it was bad, I was hoping it would have been a bit better
than how it ultimately turned out. But I gave it a second chance recently and I
have warmed up to it a bit more though I still think it has a few glaring
problems. The most notable problem is that in a few areas it’s pretty uneven.
Not only does almost every main character in this film have their own bit of
narration at one point or another, but for a film that is intended to be a
black comedy, the second half of the movie is actually quite a bit darker in
tone than the first due to the fact that the main characters accidentally kill
two people, resulting in them frantically trying to cover it up. There are
still a few bits of comedy in this part of the film, like this one bit where
they buy a chainsaw that ends up not working, but overall it’s not as
consistent as the first half of the film.
And that first half of the film, where the three main
characters are trying to kidnap a rich, spoiled businessman, is where the
film’s attempt at comedy really shines, mostly due to how the whole
‘kidnapping’ ultimately plays out. Now while this film is focusing on a true
story and the criminals of that story are this film’s ‘protagonists’, the movie
isn’t really trying to glorify them in anyway; it shows that they were greedy,
mean, and most importantly, pretty damn stupid. They think they know what
they’re doing but in reality, pretty much all of their plans end up backfiring
on them and that is where most of the film’s comedy comes from; the fact that
these guys were just a bunch of incompetent idiots. The film features a very
solid cast led by the trio of Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony
Mackie. Johnson is the biggest standout of the film as the only member of the
main group of three who sort of comes off as sympathetic being that he’s a
born-again Christian and by the end of the film is the only one who is
legitimately sorry for his actions… plus, he has the best line in the film. “Jesus
Christ himself has blessed me with many gifts, one of them is knocking someone
the f*** out!” But of course, Wahlberg and Mackie are really good in this too,
as well as others in the cast like Ed Harris and Tony Shalhoub.
So that’s ‘Pain and Gain’. I said that this film ‘attempted’
to do comedy and that sort of sums up this film as a whole. I can’t say that it
completely succeeds at being a black comedy because the film is pretty uneven
as a whole. That might be because of the subject material it’s based on. Sure,
the film is focusing on a bunch of morons whose plans are always getting messed
up but these morons were also murderers, extortionists, criminals, etc. and
although the film doesn't really try to ‘glorify’ them in any way, the film
also doesn't have us sympathizing with their victims that much either. But to
the film’s credit, it does have plenty of funny moments and the script does
frequently acknowledge how ridiculous this true story is, so it is at least self-aware
of the ludicrous nature of its premise. And of course, like the majority of
Bay’s films, I was never bored by it though this film even though it was sort
of a bit too long (like I said earlier with ‘Bad Boys II’, that’s sort of been
the thing with a lot of Bay’s films but I’ve never been too bothered by that).
So overall, ‘Pain and Gain’ is a solid popcorn flick that manages to work
despite the fact that there are a few noticeable flaws.
Rating: 4/5
(previously 3.5/5)
Stay tuned for Part 2
of this Michael Bay directorial retrospective where we’ll be looking at the
original Transformers live-action trilogy.
