Film critic Mary Ann Johanson makes an impassioned plea on behalf of director Michael Bay:
He’s angry and he’s scared, this beastly filmic inner child of Bay’s, this Id with a camera and a limitless Hollywood budget, and it’s coming to a head if Bad Boys II is any indication. His palette is considerably more bloated with rage since his first feature, 1995’s Bad Boys. You’re asking yourself in stunned amazement: “So recent? Bay has walked among us, frightening children and small dogs, for a mere eight years? It feels like an eternity, what with the Armageddons and the Pearl Harbors.” But now, the slo-mo is slower, as if to indicate how truly trapped he feels; the fiery detonations are somehow fierier, as if to demonstrate how all-consuming his self-directed fury is; the backlighting and the colored filters reduce his world to terrifying shadowy figures, as if to say, “I truly fear the strange and lonely unknowableness of humanity.”