• Martin Lawrence as Detective Sergeant Marcus Miles Burnett
• Will Smith as Detective Sergeant Michael "Mike" Lowrey
• Téa Leoni as Julie Mott
• Tchéky Karyo as Fouchet
• Theresa Randle as Theresa Burnett
• Joe Pantoliano as Captain Conrad Howard
• Marg Helgenberger as Captain Alison Sinclair
• Nestor Serrano as Detective Sanchez
• Julio Oscar Mechoso as Detective Ruiz
• Saverio Guerra as Chet
• Anna Thompson as Francine
• Kevin Corrigan as Elliot
• Michael Imperioli as Joe "Jo-Jo"
• Vic Manni as Ferguson
• Frank John Hughes as Casper
• Ralph Gonzales as Kuni
• Marc Macaulay as Noah Trafficante
• Emmanuel Xuereb as Eddie Dominguez
• John Salley as Fletcher (credited as Hacker "Fletcher")
• Karen Alexander as Max Logan
• Shaun Toub as Store Clerk
• Kim Coates as White Carjacker
• Michael 'Bear' Taliferro as Black Carjacker
• Ed Amatrudo as Van Boss
• Lisa Boyle as Girl Decoy

Principal photography began on June 27, 1994, at the Dade Tire company near downtown Miami, the city chosen to replace the original New York locale. Filming continued throughout the area, including South Beach's Tides Hotel, the Mediterranean Biltmore Hotel, the Dade County Courthouse and a multimillion-dollar estate on a private island. The second floor of downtown Miami's Alfred DuPont building was converted into a police station; a freighter on the Miami River into a drug lab. Bad Boys' climactic scenes were filmed at the Opa-Locka Airport. Filming was quick due to the TV schedules of the stars with production wrapping on August 31. The opening sequence was written and shot during post-production. In the film's early stages of development, Simpson and Bruckheimer initially envisioned Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz in the roles. When the film was written for Carvey and Lovitz, the original title for Bad Boys was Bulletproof Hearts. The film was initially set up at Hollywood Pictures, a Walt Disney Studios subsidiary, but it was placed into turnaround by management and sell the project to Columbia Pictures. Arsenio Hall turned down the role of Lowrey and cites that choice as the worst mistake he has ever made. The role eventually went to Smith. Both Lawrence and Smith were starring in their own hit TV shows, Martin and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when filming Bad Boys. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air even references the film in an episode. In the season 6, episode 20, called "I Stank Horse", Nicholas "Nicky" Banks tells Will that his parents will not let him watch Bad Boys, to which Will replies, "Bad Boys, huh? What'cha gonna do?"
Director Bay did not like the script and often engaged Smith and Lawrence in discussions about how the dialogue and scenes could improve. He often allowed them to improvise while the cameras were rolling. He secretly told Smith to call Lawrence a bitch before the car scene. The whole "two bitches in the sea" was improvised, as was Lawrence's comment when Leoni called him gay. The scene in the convenience store, when the clerk puts a gun to Burnett and Lowrey's heads and yells, telling them to "Freeze, mother bitches!", is also improvised. They came up with: "No, you freeze, bitch! Now back up, put the gun down and get me a pack of Tropical Fruit Bubbalicious". "And some Skittles." According to Bay in the DVD commentary, at the end of the film when Mike and Marcus are recuperating, Mike says "I love you, man." Bay claims that Smith refused to say the line, causing the director and actor to argue back and forth over the line. Bay wanted Smith to say the line as he felt it summed up the friendship between the cops. After their argument had lasted for half of the day's shoot and much of the crew was ready to pack up, a fed up Bay told Smith to do whatever he wanted, after which Smith changed his mind and agreed to say the line.

Bad Boys generated a total of $15.5 million during its opening weekend, beating out A Goofy Movie and Tommy Boy to reach the number one spot. For its second weekend, it remained at the top spot with $11 million. Despite being dethroned by While You Were Sleeping, the film still made $7 million in its third weekend, while also outgrossing Kiss of Death. Bad Boys was commercially successful, grossing $141,407,024 worldwide — $65,807,024 in North America and $75,600,000 internationally.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Bad Boys holds an approval rating of 43% based on 69 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Bad Boys stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have enjoyable chemistry; unfortunately, director Michael Bay too often drowns it out with set pieces and explosions in place of an actual story." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 41 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Most of the criticisms focused on the fact that despite the production of the film and the ability of the stars, the script did not diverge from the generic plot of a buddy-cop genre film, instead opting for repeated use of formulaic scenes.

Roger Ebert in his video review of the film on At the Movies noted that despite the highly energetic approach of the two lead actors and the visual style of the film, their acting talents were mostly "new wine in old bottles". He illustrated that many of the elements featured in the film including both the plot and characters had been recycled from other films, particularly those from the Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop series—recurrent stock-characters, police detective clichés and over-long action scenes. In describing the archetypal cop-buddy genre action scene adhered to by the film, Ebert noted "Whenever a movie like this starts to drag, there's always one infallible solution; have a car-chase and then blow something up real good." Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 stars.

Gene Siskel in his appraisal of the film said that he had lost interest in the film after its introduction due to the very formulaic approach, and repeated Roger Ebert's criticism that the talents of the lead actors were wasted; suggesting that the production company did not spend significant time producing a script which would be suitable for their talents. Siskel gave the film 2 out of 4.