A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU "BULL DURHAM" AND "ALF": You know how, everyone once in a while, Roger Ebert will get up on the high horse and write all indignantly? Today's review of "Bad Boys II" is one of those days:

What happens next is kind of sickening. The Hummer speeds down a hillside entirely covered by the tarpaper shanties of poor people. Walls and roofs, doors and windows, dogs and chickens, corrugated iron and curtains, all fly into the air as the Hummer cuts a swath through this settlement. And I'm thinking, people live there. There's a quick mention that drug production takes place on the hillside, but still: Dozens of poor shantytown dwellers must have been killed, not that the movie notices.

There was once a time when a hero would sacrifice his own life rather than injure innocent bystanders. No longer. The heroes of "Bad Boys II" are egotistical monsters, concerned only with their power, their one-liners, their weapons, their cars, their desires. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that characters who wipe out a village can also make cruel jokes at the expense of a kid on his first date. Everybody involved in this project needs to do some community service.