Director Report Card: Tony Scott (1991)

6. The Last Boy Scout

Production on “Days of Thunder” was so chaotic that it ended Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer's relationship, at least for a while. The movie wasn't a huge hit either but Scott's reputation was such that he simply went across town to work with another big shot action movie producer. That would be Joel Silver. Silver had recently partnered with Geffen Productions to produce “The Last Boy Scout,” the latest script from Shane Black. The “Lethal Weapon” scribe officially became the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood when Geffen bought this script for 1.75 million dollars. The movie would also see Silver re-teaming with Bruce Willis, their first collaboration since “Die Hard 2.” “The Last Boy Scout” was also a difficult production. Willis would insist on extensive rewrites. Scott would feud with both Silver and Willis. The movie was extensively reworked in editing. “The Last Boy Scout” also opened under expectations but, unlike “Days of Thunder,” would become a cult classic on video.

Joe Hallenbeck was once a national hero, after he took a bullet meant for the president. After he refused to cover up a senator beating a woman, he was fired from the Secret Service. Joe now works as a P.I. and his life is in tatters. Within the course of a day, Joe discovers his wife is sleeping with his best friend, watches the aforementioned friend get blown up by a car bomb, and takes the job the now deceased friend offered him. That would be to protect Cory, the girlfriend of disgraced pro-football player Jimmy Dix. After Cory is gunned down by in front of them, Joe and Jimmy reluctantly team-up. They uncover a conspiracy involving a professional football team owner, the mob, drugs, and gambling. 

Like a lot of Shane Black's scripts, “The Last Boy Scout” is a homage to pulp detective novels of days long since passed. The same sort of literature that inspired the classic film noirs that Black and Scott obviously admire. Much like those novels, “The Last Boy Scout” has a plot that quickly grows convoluted. There's multiple plot points running that seem disconnected at first but eventually intertwine. Lots of side characters work their ways in and out of the story, some of them important and some not-so-important. Schemes are cooked up and our protagonists are embroiled in them. Evidence and leads are found, lost, and found again. If you keep track of all of it, you might get a bit confused. 

Like Black's later directorial credits, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and 'The Nice Guys,” the twisting neo-noir plot have very little to do with why the movie is so entertaining. “The Last Boy Scout” is packed, front to back, with the kind of hilarious and lightning fast dialogue that Black is most well known for. The number of one-liners inside “The Last Boy Scout” are almost impossible to keep track of. Joe cracks jokes at a hitman, about how fat his wife is, when he has a gun pointed at his head. A sly mention of a horse from Jimmy comes up again, brilliantly, at the end of the movie. Even when getting shot at by the bad guys, our heroes never stop throwing quips around, about time travel or art classes. It might've been insufferable if the dialogue wasn't so consistently sharp and funny. Black makes sure to include a meta-joke at the end about one-liners too.

Not that there was any doubt about who wrote this movie, just based on the dialogue. Even if that wasn't the case, you could still tell “The Last Boy Scout” was obviously a Shane Black joint. The movie is rift with his trademarks. Like “Lethal Weapon” and his later movies, it's about two dudes who fucking hate each other at first. However, over the course of a crazy adventure, they end up becoming best pals. The movie also features a smart-mouthed young kid, in the form of Darian, Joe's potty-mouthed pre-teen daughter. Naturally, she gets swooped up in the crazy crime story too. “The Last Boy Scout” isn't quite a perfect Shane Black hat trick. The movie is not set at Christmas though “Satan Claus” is something of a running joke.

As originally written, Black's screenplay was much darker than a lot of his other films. The already psychotic villain was even more dangerous as originally written, involved in the production of snuff films and trying to kill Joe's wife with a chainsaw at one point. Even after the extensive rewrites, “The Last Boy Scout” is still deeply cynical. The movie is set in a world without heroes. Joe was once a national hero but has now fallen on such hard times that, when the bad guys try to frame him for murder, nobody doubts it. Jimmy, coincidentally enough, was once Joe's sports hero. After catching him snorting drugs in his bathroom, Joe looses all respect for him. And in this hopeless world, what emerges as our religion? Football, of course. The opening – where the appropriately named Bill Medley sings about the greatness of the sport – is set against an American flag. The corruption of this institution, the last thing we can all agree on, is the proof that the movie's world is totally sullied..

Probably the biggest sign that “The Last Boy Scout” takes place in a hopeless world, aside from the fact that athletes are the last heroes anyone has, is the amount of abuse women suffer. Joe and Jimmy's virtue is established when they both defend women from sexual assault. Jimmy walks in on another football player forcing a woman's head under the water of a jacuzzi. Joe punched out a senator torturing a woman. The murder of another woman is what brings the two of them together. Now, don't think this makes “The Last Boy Scout” especially progressive. Said dead woman was a stripper, albeit the type that only exists in movies that don't take their clothes off. There's still lots of casual language questioning the virtues of people's wives and mothers. Yet it is notable that, at the very least, the amoral setting of the film agrees that rape is bad.

Tony Scott was the perfect man to bring this script to life. If a filmmaker tried to handle a story that's so bleak in a realistic way, “The Last Boy Scout' would've been far too grim to be enjoyable. Instead, Scott decides to create a hyper-stylized, comic book-like world. The scene where Joe takes out the hitman is set in a alleyway, so pitch-black it becomes almost purple. Exaggerated clouds of white smoke steam up out of all the sewer greats. A couple of Dutch angles are thrown in too. Of course, Tony includes some cars and people silhouetted against the a deep orange sunset several times too. The stylized lighting and frenzied editing of the last act action scenes are also very familiar to anyone who has seen a Tony Scott movie before. He was the exact right person to bring this script to life, even if Joel Silver and Bruce Willis didn't think so at the time.

Adding to the movie's exaggerated world is how ridiculously over-the-top its action set pieces are. When shit blows up in “The Last Boy Scout,” it blows way the fuck up. And a lot of things blow up in this movie. Multiple cars explode gloriously, in enormous, rolling fireballs several times throughout the first hour. When people get shot, the squibs are giant. Bruce Willis kills a dude with a single punch in this movie. By the last act, shit is happening like cars are driving down mountains, driving off roofs, landing in swimming pools, and then catching on fire. The finale involves the bad guy getting splattered into red mist by helicopter blades. The first cut of “The Last Boy Scout” was so gory, that the movie had to edit down from an NC-17 to an R. Yet it's hard to imagine anyone being offended by something so purposely exaggerated and ridiculous. 

Shane Black also likes to write main characters who are troubled. Martin Riggs, after all, was suicidal in the first “Lethal Weapon.” Joe Hallenbeck has it almost as bad. In the beginning, he's sleeping in his car and getting cucked by his best friend. His wife hates him. His daughter doesn't respect him. He's blown every opportunity he's ever had. His character establishing moment occurs when he looks in his rear view mirror and describes himself as a complete and total loser. Bruce Willis has always been at his most charming when operating as a slightly sad-sack everyman. John McClane was compelling not because he was a bad-ass who never quit but because he was a normal guy stuck in an insane situation. Joe exaggerated this quality of Willis' to even more cartoonish levels. It really works. Additionally, Willis is totally adapt at playing with Black's crisp, comedic dialogue.

Supposedly, Bruce Willis and Damon Wayons, who plays Jimmy, hated working with each other. That's never evident in the movie, as the two have excellent chemistry together. Wayans, a veteran comedy performer, can naturally grapple with Black's dialogue just fine as well. We know Damon Wayans can be funny but I was a bit surprised at what a strong dramatic performer he is. Jimmy gets a monologue midway through the film about how he lost his wife and child to a car accident while he was training for the play-offs. It's a weighty moment and Wayans' delivery of it is subdued, as if the character has had a long time to live with this heartbreak. It's a show-stopping moment and then the film continues with the wisecracks and mayhem shortly afterwards. But that's a scene I'm going to remember for a while.

A colorful supporting cast, featuring some familiar faces, is also assembled. Danielle Harris, after “Halloween” 4 and 5 but long before the “Halloween” remakes, plays Willis' daughter. She's hilarious, the contrast between an adorable little girl with braces and the horrible things she says never coming off better. Harris makes Darian's tendency to show up where she shouldn't or talk via a cat puppet pretty charming. Halle Berry, back when she was just an up-and-comer, appears as Jimmy's doomed girlfriend and Bruce McGill appears as Joe's doomed friend. Tayler Negron, of all people, plays Milo. He's the psychotic enforcer chasing after our heroes for most of the film. Negron makes the character a vaguely effeminate weirdo who always refers to people by their full names and seems overly sadistic. He certainly makes for an unforgettably strange villain, in the pantheon of 80s/90s action movie bad guys. 

Wikipedia tells me that “The Last Boy Scout” made 114 million worldwide against a 43 million dollar budget, so Warner Bros, Geffen, and Joel Silver didn't loose money on this one. But coming off the 240 million dollar gross of “Die Hard 2,” it was seen as a disappointment. Releasing such a hyper-violent movie around the Christmas holiday might've had something to do with the middling returns. Critics were largely unimpressed, most finding the movie cliched or too violent. Eventually, though, the film would find defenders thanks to its hilarious dialogue, stylized direction, and uniquely cynical worldview. Once again, Tony Scott makes a bad-ass action movie, and a bad-ass looking action movie, while letting a capable cast and a strong script speak for itself. The result is pretty damn entertaining. [Grade: B+]