Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

John austin This big time early eighties release has been all but forgotten until it started showing up on cable a few times recently.Sean Pean was still too young to be a political agitator, and he was desperate to shed his Jeff Spicoli image with this tough youth prison flick. He does a good job as O'Brien, who winds up behind bars after killing someone during his juvenile crime spree. He rises up the ranks of the prison hierarchy until Esai Morales, the brother of the boy he killed, winds up in the same jail looking for revenge. It's an old time prison movie right down to the wailing siren you hear during a daylight escape. In addition to Penn and Santoni, you'll also see a youthful Clancy Brown perfecting his on screen villainy as a brutal con.This movie was kind of a big deal in our area when it was filmed. I lived near where they shot most of it, and I remember the newspaper put out a casting call for local kids to try out for bit parts in the movie.

rockoforza After playing class clown Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," Sean Penn was looking to change his image for something tougher. He found the perfect vehicle in 1983's "Bad Boys." Where Spicoli was a slack-muscled mop haired surfer dude in boardshorts, his character of Mick O'Brien in "Bad Boys" is a dangerous street tough. Changing his body image to play O'Brien, Penn added pounds of muscle to his frame and traded Spicoli's stoned grin for a permanent scowl. This flick really begins Penn's long line of playing angry young men who use physical strength to get what they want (think "At Close Range" and "Colors") and it's one of his best.In a botched drug robbery, Penn accidentally kills a young latino boy who happens to be the brother of his high school rival Paco Moreno, played by a smoldering Esai Morales. Both Morales and Penn are in their 20s, but nail the younger look, making them believable as teens. Morales, whose ripped physique is on display as much as Penn's, is a menacing force to contend with. His promise to make Penn suffer for slaying his little brother puts the plot in motion.Penn is sent to a juvenile prison where the adults look the other way while the young inmates go wild. Penn's cellmate, oddball brainiac Horowitz, fills him in on the power structure. The place is run by Viking and Tweety, two older boys who terrorize the weaker ones. We watch Tweety rape a young black boy who, when he resists, is brutally slain by the two. Ultimately, they target Penn but, in a brutal fight, he savagely injures them both. In the shower afterwards, we see Penn in just a towel, his powerful young body on display, being told by Horowitz that he is now the top dog. Together they use his muscles to take over the day to day life in the prison.Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Morales takes his revenge by raping Penn's girlfriend played by Ally Sheedy. Though wearing a ski mask during the attack, he purposely removes it as he climaxes so that she knows it's payback for her boyfriend's actions. This lands Morales in the same prison as Penn and now the plot picks up speed with the inevitable showdown between these two. Inmates -- and even some of the adult guards -- start betting on which one of these two "bad boys" will take the life of the other. Intimidation becomes the watchword, as we watch them preparing for the fight. In one telling scene, Morales is shirtless, doing concentration curls with a dumbbell, while Penn and the others watch. His ripped latino physique sends O'Brien an unmistakable message of physical power.The fight finally takes place with the smirking guards encouraging the young gladiators to square off. The prison becomes an arena where the two boys are to battle to the death. It's muscle to muscle, with fists and vicious kicks and finally a prison shank. Each boy struggling to get in a killing blow. Rumors swirled around the production that Penn was jealous of Morales's obvious physical superiority and that he wanted a darker ending where he uses the shank to off the young latino. However,when Penn has Morales pinned with the blade poised over his heart, he spares his life. Led off by the guards, we assume that he is now on the road to redemption --- maybe. As an actor, we know that Penn is definitely on the road to more roles like this, including 2003's "Mystic River," where he is another "bad boy" --- just grown up.

Spikeopath Bad Boys is directed by Rick Rosenthal and written by Richard Di Lello. It stars Sean Penn, Esai Morales, Eric Gurry, Alan Ruck, Ally Sheedy and Clancy Brown. Music is by Bill Conti and cinematography by Bruce Surtees and Donald E. Thorin.Mick O'Brien (Penn), a teenage criminal from Chicago, finds himself doing hard time at the Rainford Juvenile Correction Facility after his latest robbery attempt ends in tragedy. Rainford is not a place where young thugs get reformed, it's where they become harder and more prepared for a life of crime........ Teenage hoodlum movies are notoriously difficult to get right, more often than not, in spite of being riveting viewing experiences, they come off as being exploitive rather than educationally observant. Over the years there have been one or two exceptions, leading the way was Scum (1979), Alan Clarke's scorching appraisal of the British Borstal system, and from America, Rick Rosenthal's Scum influenced Bad Boys starring a pre-fame Sean Penn. Bad Boys is a rare old beast in the pantheon of young offender movies, it manages to overcome inevitability and primitiveness of plot by giving thought to its central characters, notably Penn's wounded animal protagonist., who remarkably isn't a perfunctory part of the plot. Sense of place, too, is given much attention to detail as Rosenthal gets in tight within the confines of this juvenile facility. Di Lello's script is thankfully free of the clichés that often detract from the drama in a prison based movie, the moral choice heartbeat that pounds away in Bad Boys is never twee or shoehorned in by way of a necessity. The thematics exist on very real humanistic terms. Led by a spitfire turn from Penn, cast are mostly great, with Gurry (engaging), Sheedy (tender), Morales (complex) and Brown (menacing) adding a professionalism not often seen in films of this type.Problems arise when the film goes outside of Rainford's fences, for it loses some pent up momentum. What made Scum so searing and oppressive was that it never left the Borstal facility, claustrophobia and anger inherent were the order of the day. Bad Boys' makers choose to weld two concurrent stories on the outside, with that of Mick O'Brien's fate, it works in respect of the narrative outcome (which with some annoyance is never in any doubt), but at some cost to the mood created in the bleak interiors. There's also the issues of having to accept the ridiculousness of certain developments in the story. Be it the easy access to substances no real life prisoner would be allowed near, or the leap of faith needed to imagine that the prison authorities would allow the final confrontation to become a reality, we are asked to look the other way in order to get some hefty wallop into the drama.Violent and unflinching in its emotional honesty, and supremely crafted on both sides of the camera, Bad Boys, one or two hiccups aside, is a first rate drama. 8/10

TOMASBBloodhound Bad Boys certainly has a lot going for it on many levels, but there are enough implausible moments in the script that keep it from any type of "classic" status. The story centers around Sean Penn playing an angry and violent young hood from the streets of Chicago getting sent to a tough juvenile detention center after accidentally killing a young boy during a botched robbery attempt. The balance of the story deals with Penn adjusting to his new confinement and having to prove how tough he is again and again. Once he has established himself as the toughest kid in the place, the plot is turned on its side. The older brother of the boy he killed (Morales) is also sent to the facility... for raping and almost killing Penn's girlfriend as revenge for the boy's death! From the moment he arrives, everyone knows that the score will have to be settled once and for all. Who will survive??Yes, its a pretty good premise, but too many detours are taken before the anticipated climax finally arrives. And many of them just don't make sense. First of all, there is no doubt that Penn's character is one tough punk. Yet he is just not physically imposing enough to be the "barn boss" as the toughest inmate is called. Yes, he whips the two punks who once held the title in a crafty manner, but there would no doubt have been many others waiting in line for that title. Another problem deals with Penn's escape attempt. After learning of his girlfriend's rape, he actually breaks out of the facility and somehow is able to make it all the way back to Chicago from the location several miles out in the country. Even if he were actually able to do this (which wouldn't be likely), notice how once he's captured and returned to the lockup, they don't even punish him!! Uh huh! I'm guessing the escape and brief rendezvous with the badly bruised girlfriend were meant to establish some sort of motivation for Penn wanting to kill Morales. But honestly, would this type of character need such motivation? Not likely. In addition, Penn is momentarily taken to the state prison for adults and warned that this is the path he is headed down if he screws up again. And apparently this is why he initially refuses to fight Morales when he first arrives at the facility. Penn just wants to do his remaining time and split. Again, not likely. A guy like this would not hesitate to accept a challenge from any man who violated his woman. Another problem deals with how Morales and Penn are left in the same cell block right up to the moment Morales is about to be transferred to another facility. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to keep the two sequestered from one another, even if it meant putting one of them in the hole for a while??? But then we couldn't have had our final fight then, could we? Oh, well.There are a lot of good aspects of this film, too. The acting is outstanding, the casting is picture perfect, and the locations look authentic. The film is full of surprises, and a lot of them work. The Jewish whiz-kid who shares a cell with Penn steals every scene he's in. Look for a young Clancy Brown as the yard boss de-throned by Penn. Ally Sheedy gives a good performance, but she doesn't look like she belongs in that neighborhood! And I like the fact that the film doesn't try to make Penn or any of the others out to be misunderstood kids. They are all rotten to the core and deserve their punishment! Despite some flaws with the script, Bad Boys is still worth at least 7 of 10 stars.The Hound.