Sound-Image

I start my analysis at the height of Marcus and Mike Lowry victory of a “righteous bust” in Bad Boys 2. The music starts very upbeat and full of enthusiasm and quickly turns dramatic as it cuts to a medium pan shot of Marcus as he receives a call stating that his sister had recently been taken hostage, by the very person they’d just defeated. The non-diegetic violin’s chords are strained as the pan is slowed and zoomed into Marcus’s face to show his anger. The sequence quickly cuts to a pan of the police precinct with multiple officers standing around a conference room flustered and concerned; than a quick cut to Marcus sitting down. The ambience in the room is very foggy with a flickering type of glare shining through the scene to accentuate the tension in the room. Every time the images change the sound reacts to it. As the images slow down so does the pace of the music. The shots are arranged in sequential order as well as in order of the present speaker. The speaker or where our attention should be placed in that moment composes the shots. While Marcus is sitting down looking up at Captain Howard speaking the camera is in a high angle position. When Captain Howard finishes stating “Captain Dean, from the F.B.I, informed me that they have pinpointed your sister and her hostage taker over the border of Cuba.” The camera cuts to Mike Lowry’s reaction of distraught from Marcus’s point of view. It then quickly cuts to Captain Dean speaking in a continued high angle shot stating that “The United States does not negotiate with any hostage takers; especially Cuban hostage takers.” The cut then transitions into a subjective shot of Captain Howards’ annoyance of the previous statement. Marcus becomes enraged at the F.B.I’s nonchalant attitude towards the matter and storms out of the conference room; the camera follows him and swiftly cuts to Captain Howard nonverbally suggesting that Mike check on him. Mike Lowry runs after him however his running after him is done in slow motion with dramatic drums beating slowly to prolong the magnitude of the situation. There is a match on action cut as Mike Lowry runs to the door and reaches out to open it. The cuts appear to be seamless as they attempt to get all point of views. This particular sequence catapulted the entire movie to a level of intense anticipation and anxiety.