It's a ballsy choice, then, that the directing team of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah ( Black ) choose to sideline him for a while immediately after a bombastic opening car-chase sequence.
Taking over for Michael Bay this go-round, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (who helmed the criminally underseen Black ) elect to update the 90s gloss for a more modern template suitable for this generation of cop flicks.
Building on the visual flare that they displayed in their problematic film Black , they succeed in recapturing the chemistry of the original Bad Boys while exposing how dated the previous films are.
Bay is gone (save a brief on-screen cameo), but Black (a fantastic Belgium crime drama) directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah are more than up to the task where paying homage to his style is concerned.
Cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert ( Revenge ), a prior collaborator with Abri and Fallah on 2015’s Black , similarly balances the familiar with touches akin to original cinematographer Howard Atherton while injecting a modern sensibility to the color palette.
On that last point, co-directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah ( Black , 2015) deliver a lot of bang for their buck, and some CG flames aside they manage most of it with a heavy reliance on practical effects and good, old-fashioned stunt work.