Mike Lowry (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are detectives investigating the theft of a hefty amount of heroin stolen from their police station in the middle of the night. Concurrently, one of Lowry's female friends is murdered while attending a "private party." Unfortunately for the bad guys, there's a witness, and her name is Julie (Tea Leoni). For reasons not worth getting into, this leads to Lowry and Burnett switching identities, which in turn, leads to funny misunderstandings.

Now, the plot is VERY cookie-cutter. You've seen this movie before, even if it wasn't called "Bad Boys." But regardless of that fact, this is the type of mindless action movie I enjoy every once in a while (please note that I don't consider this a great, or even a very good movie).

Smith and Lawrence have an undeniable chemistry, and it will be interesting to see if they can once again reproduce it when they team up for the upcoming sequel due out Summer 2003 (eight years after the original). In addition to the on-screen pairing of Lawrence and Smith, this movie also features all the buddy-cop, action movie clichés you can stomach…

High speed car chases…. check
One cop's a family man, the other's a playa…. check
Tons of explosions and gunfire…. check
An evil foreign bad guy with an accent…. check
Mismatched partners always arguing with each other…. check
Jokes about how lame white people are…. check
Unnecessary catchphrases like "You forgot your boarding pass!"…. double check

Video:
Being a Superbit release, Columbia Tri-Star proudly presents "Bad Boys" in Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1. This is almost reference quality here, as I haven't seen a DVD with a vibrant color palette like this in a very long time. The print is free of blemishes (artifacting, grain, dirt, etc), and the picture is very sharp. The transfer present on this Superbit edition is noticeably better than the one on the previous release, in case you're wondering.

Audio:
The audio is presented here in Dolby 5.1 and DTS. The more-than-adequate 5.1 audio track was present on the original release. It utilizes surrounds very nicely… but the real star of the Superbit release is the DTS track. Everything sounds excellent, from character dialogue, gunfire and explosions, to the movie's then-hip soundtrack. In certain scenes (i.e. the race), you will feel the DTS rocking your world.

Menus:
A static DVD menu offers the choices of "Play Movie", "Audio Set Up", "Subtitles", and "Scene Selections."

Extras:
No extras here… If you want supplements, go check out the previous release.

Final Thoughts:
For me, Superbits are ONLY for DVD enthusiasts who have a top-notch DTS sound system, and a killer widescreen television set. If you have both, don't care for extras, and genuinely like "Bad Boys", then you should get this DVD immediately. Otherwise, I'd simply recommend it just for the improved transfer.