Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

The Bad Boys action-comedy franchise will be turning 30 next year, and there’s no denying that—with this fourth film, Ride or Die—it’s feeling a little long in the tooth.

As if to illustrate that point, too-cool detective Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) is finally tying the knot, while his partner Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) suffers a near-fatal heart attack that compels him to reevaluate his life.

The crooks that they’re up against this go-around are nastier than ever and so a new generation of sons, daughters, in-laws and rookies must step up to fill the gap left by these not-so-bad-anymore “boys.”

Characters living and dead from across the series return for this story involving a posthumous frame-up of their long-suffering captain, and the high-stakes investigation reveals dangerous ties between the drug cartel and the justice system.

Numero Quattro is more of the same, for better or worse, although the cringey dialogue clearly falls into the “worse” category.

Director of the first half of the series, Michael Bay, has moved on (although he cameos) but the current custodians maintain his aggressive style of camerawork while adding some clever visuals all their own.

The filmmakers made the choice to shoot this movie razor-sharp, and the true 4K master utilized here makes for a reference-quality disc.

Frequent closeups of the stars’ faces reveal plenty of pores, stubble and tiny beads of sweat, while sunny, colorful Miami is captured and accentuated in at times eye-popping Dolby Vision glory.

The Dolby Atmos audio too makes this a demo-worthy flick, with some of the most consistently generous bass levels I’ve heard in a while reinforcing everything from the music to the intense gunplay and then when something blows up, we don’t just hear it, we feel it.

And in between the action beats, seemingly every scene has been mixed to create an engaging, room-filling quality.

Worth noting, the bundled HD Blu-ray drops the Atmos in favor of DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.

No extras are included on the 4K platter but that companion Blu-ray proffers some deleted/extended scenes, bloopers and four short, flattery-filled featurettes.

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Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray
Sony, 2024
ASPECT RATIO: 2.39:1
HDR FORMATS: Dolby Vision, HDR10
AUDIO FORMAT: Dolby Atmos with TrueHD 7.1 core
LENGTH: 116 mins.
MPAA RATING: R
DIRECTORS: Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah
STARRING: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Eric Dane, Jacob Scipio