Caffeinated Clint
What do you get when you mesh an actress whose film career has seemingly gone the way of the laserdisc player with a franchise that’s struggled for so many years to get it’s film division back off the ground that it’s forced to settle for the next big thing?
“Bad Boys for Life” starring Jessica Alba!
BOOM!
Two decades on, former TV Dark Angel Jessica Alba is returning to the box in NBC’s new “Bad Boys” TV series. It’s quite a coup for the show to steal an actress who, at one time, was Hollywood’s big ticket- starring in such fancy fare as “Sin City”, “Honey” and “Fantastic Four”. In more recent times, she’s had forgettable parts in the likes of “The Love Guru” with Mike Myers, “Spy Kids 4D” and “Mechanic Resurrection” with Jason Statham. Film doesn’t quite know what to do with the talented young Pomona-born thesp, so hopefully TV serves better her gift.
A new one-hour actioner – without stars Martin Lawrence and Will Smith aka main appeal – that does the gender-switcheroo on the Michael Bay film series, “Bad Boys For Life” takes Gabrielle Union’s “Bad Boys II” character and transplants her in LA – alongside a new character played by Alba.
Syd Burnett (Union) ”has left the DEA and now has a fresh start in her new job as an LAPD detective. Alba will play Nancy McKenna, Burnett’s partner. McKenna joined the Army out of high school and spent most of the 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women weren’t allowed in combat, so she joined the military police to get closer to the action. McKenna is now a detective raising two preteen stepkids with her husband.”
Aside from Union, only port-over from the film series is Jerry Bruckheimer, who’ll snare an obligatory EP credit.
Alba cut her teeth in various films before landing the lead role in the James Cameron produced series “Dark Angel” back in 2000. Set in 2019, the series chronicles the life of Max Guevara (Alba), a genetically enhanced super-soldier who escapes from a covert military facility as a child. In a post-apocalyptic Seattle, she tries to lead a normal life, while eluding capture by government agents and searching for her brothers and sisters scattered in the aftermath of their escape. Afterwards, Alba worked quite regularly with filmmaker Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City”, “Machete”) and gained fleeting movie stardom as the Invisible Woman in the first round of “Fantastic Four” movies at Fox.
