L’Will Smith’s exile from the public scene following the slap given to Chris Rock on the night of the 2022 Oscars lasted two years and three months. In fact, it was released a few weeks ago in the United States and now it is also released in Italy Bad Boys: Ride or Die, new chapter in the film series with Martin Lawrence, the first film with Will Smith shot after the event. In fact, a film by him has already been released in the last two years, but on Apple TV. Is called Emancipation and he plays a slave in the time of slavery. It was a film shot and finished before the slap and, not only was it not a theatrical release, but beyond that Will Smith had done very little promotional activity.
It’s American protocol when dealing with scandals of this type. The protagonist immediately becomes “toxic”, that is, anyone around him avoids him, dissociates and distances himself. All the production companies put on hold the films for which they have signed a contract with him, the sponsors stop collaborations and nobody wants to be seen in public with him or to be associated with him. Purgatory begins, a state of absence from everything, withdrawn from public life, solitary and at best under the radar (he has relationships with others and work, but secretly). This is until there is the impression that you can try to stick your head out.
In the case of Will Smith, what interrupted his self-exile was an apology video, another conventional and obligatory step, public prostration and the promise of improvement. Now Jerry Bruckheimer (historic producer of action films of the 90s) and ColumbiaThat on Bad Boys: Ride or Die he puts his face into it as well as the capital, they decided it might be worth a try, with a franchise film, so a pretty sure shot, to see if Will Smith is still Will Smith. The response was good at the first American weekend, the film is in line with the previous one and with what would have been the expectations if there had not been slaps and exiles. Everything as before (it seems at the moment), or almost.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die he doesn’t pretend nothing is happening, on the contrary he changes Will Smith’s character and in a certain sense it can be read as a metaphorical version of the process of penance and purification. Agent Mike in the three previous films of the series has always been bold, a conqueror of women and the one who, in the couple with his friend and colleague played by Martin Lawrence, comes out best: cooler, more action-packed, with jokes best and never ridiculous. In this film, however, due to a detail of the plot, Mike is in difficulty, he has to learn something, he has to do penance in a certain sense, and his partner is the one who puts him on the gridiron with jokes and action. At least until the finale in which he proves he understands.
But not only: this is also the story of how Mike fights to save his wife. He had married her in the previous chapter and now he finds himself in the situation of having to recover her from whoever kidnapped her, as if the image of Will Smith, defender of women who triggered the slap, was re-enacted, only in terms of penance . The image of him therefore remains that of a hero who acted not out of violence or malice, but to defend his wife, only with an aura of a path to salvation.
It is not possible to know whether it is this allegorical form of apology that has worked; probably it wasn’t just this, given that the film did well straight away, even before word of mouth could spread, but it certainly seems clear that at least for great films Will Smith is once again a name to rely on. It doesn’t mean that everything is exactly the same as before. If there hadn’t been the slap, Smith would have been an Oscar winner, therefore both a box office and award-winning actor, good for both high-grossing and sophisticated and independent cinema. If the audience of franchises (in which the actors always count less than the brand) has accepted it, this does not mean that the more demanding audience of independent cinema (but also smaller) is willing to do so.
The unmissable items for the man of style
Born in Rome in 1981, he struggled to live until he started working as a critic in the golden age of blogs. He began working for pay at the end of the ’00s and alternated criticism with freelance journalism for various newspapers. From 2009 to 2012 he was selector of the Extra section of the Rome Film Festival, then programmer and for a year also co-director of the Taormina Film Festival. Since 2015 he has been an Italian correspondent for the British newspaper Screen International. He is a teacher of the master’s degree in journalistic criticism at the Silvio D’Amico Academy of Dramatic Art, he has published with UTET a book interview with Gabriele Muccino entitled La vita occhi and with Bietti a pamphlet entitled “I hate Italian cinema”. He boasts countless threats from some of the most titled Italian directors.
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