“Ride Along 2” Movie Review

By Kyle Cuppy

ride-along-2As his wedding approaches, Ben Barber (Kevin Hart), wants to prove himself, and the only way he thinks he can do that is by going on a trip to Miami with his brother-in-law James Payton (Ice Cube) to bust a drug dealer. James wants nothing to do with Ben because he always seemed to mess things up. Being one of the best detectives in Atlanta, James knew he couldn’t mess this up. After days of denying Ben to go to Miami with him he finally caves in and gives him a chance.

Once they get to Miami Ben starts to lose track of the mission and starts having more fun than focusing on what they’re there for. James quickly gets a grip on him and makes sure he puts his full concentration on busting Antonio Pope (Benjamin Bratt), the drug dealer.

The first clue they found was a hacker named AJ (Ken Jeong) who encrypted a flash drive with information about Pope on it. No one could solve the code so they set out to find AJ. AJ was very good at tricking them into thinking he was on their side, but he was always against them. The three went to Pope’s house to use his personal computer so AJ could talk Ben through on how to decrypt the flash drive. Although AJ wasn’t completely on Ben and James side, he wasn’t on Pope’s either. He stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Pope, and nobody knew he did it except for Ben and James.

Staying out of Pope’s site and being quiet, Ben continues to get walked through the decryption process by AJ. As they are about to finish up, Pope walks in and catches Ben. Pope’s security guards brought in James and they had a talk about what they were doing in his house. After a short interrogation, Pope lets them go but they promised to help him find AJ. Being on AJ’s side, Ben and James decide not to help Pope, but do what they came to Miami to do.

Overall I give this film a 6/10 due to some cliche jokes, and sort of a similar plot to other movies that involve detectives busting drug dealers.