Bad Boys is one of the early Sean Penn films that may be a bit off your radar, it wasn’t a high profile film at the time and it seems to just have gotten plopped onto Blu-ray and released with little to no effort. Is this film a hidden gem or simply just another catalog release?
Film ![]()
The film follows a young man, Mike O’Brien (Penn) who is in a juvenile detention center for vehicular manslaughter of his rival, Paco’s, younger brother. Mike O’Brien has revenge exacted upon him when Paco rapes Mike’s girlfriend while Mike is still locked up. The film gets more suspenseful when Paco goes to jail for the rape and is sent to the same facility as Mike.
The film is gritty and definitely feels before it’s time. The subject matter and atmosphere created were not as common as they are today and although the film doesn’t get the attention it deserves it definitely is one of the few movies of it’s time that foreshadowed the imminent rise of violent crime dramas that have become very popular.
The film feels a bit dated and it’s definitely weird to see a young Sean Penn, but he pulls out all of the stops to give a great powerhouse performance that grounds the whole movie. With Rick Rosenthal (Halloween 2) at the helm of the film we experience a lot of talent while watching this film. It’s a bit of a bummer that the movie isn’t as well-known as it was but perhaps the blu-ray release can spark some new interest.
Video ![]()
Bad Boys’ video is displayed using the MPEG-4 AVC codec in 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The film’s source material’s quality suffers from a film stock with lots of grain, especially during the low lit scenes. It seems like for the Blu-ray transfer they used a very fast and harsh pass over the video with a noise removal filter that really softens the image to a point where it becomes distracting. Texture and details within contrast are all blurred and regardless we still get a noisy image during the scenes at night.
The colors are muted and come off a bit bland, but this look is a product of the film’s time so it’s hard to blame it on this particular Blu-ray, but regardless there’s very little to say about the video quality that isn’t a criticism.
Audio ![]()
Bad Boys ‘s audio comes at us using the 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio codec which, considering the source, doesn’t help the feeling that this was a lazy catalog release from the studio. The sound is isolated to the front speakers and during the scenes where you’d expect depth, you’re really left with a feeling that something’s missing.
The dialogue is clear but a bit shallow sounding either from the inferior codec or most likely from the original recording and the sound effects come off flat especially in scenes with many sounds layered on top of each other as they struggle to play through the 2.0 codec.
Special Features ![]()
Besides a trailer which is hard to count, the only real extra is a commentary track from the director Rick Rosenthal. The commentary is a bit dull with recollections of the production and the director’s experience with Sean Penn being the only thing that’s memorable when he goes into detail about Sean’s on set relationship with Esai.
Final Thoughts
For a film that lacked much impact when it was released, it’s no surprise the catalog release mirrored that response once again. With a lazy transfer that touts both underwhelming video and audio quality, the fact it has only one extra doesn’t help it’s score much either especially considering it’s the same feature from previous DVD releases. If you’re Sean Penn Completest then this is a no brainer, however I don’t see much reason to upgrade a DVD version.
