The Last Boy Scout (1991)

 

Director: Tony Scott

Screenplay: Shane Black

Cast: Bruce Willis as Joseph Cornelius "Joe" Hallenbeck; Damon Wayans as James "Jimmy" Dix; Chelsea Field as Sarah Hallenbeck; Noble Willingham as Sheldon "Shelly" Marcone; Taylor Negron as Milo; Danielle Harris as Darian Hallenbeck; Halle Berry as Cory; Bruce McGill as Mike Matthews

Ephemeral Waves

 

Shit, we’re being beaten up by the inventor of Scrabble!

I have no idea why I hated The Last Boy Scout back in the day. I guess I was not vibing to these types of action films. We had a lot of them in the family DVD collection, among the early Warner Brothers ones where they released them in cardboard DVD cases, and alongside not really appreciating action films for what they were, I likely dismissed this film outright too for being offensive rather than carefully pinpointing what aged in films from the past. The Last Boy Scout, and Shane Black’s more profane and witty storytelling, vibes for me more now even if arch, part of a solid film from a fascinating era when Hollywood movies could be very adult in tone.

The first scene really is a highlight to a production that, to my surprise, was an absolute nightmare to even get to the finish line as a final production, melding Black’s snark, Tony Scott’s skill as a director, and great Hollywood production value, a grim existential breakdown of a football player who, in the rain during a game, brings a gun on the pitch. And it is Billy Blanks, a wonderful cameo from a b-movie star, usually in martial arts films from this period, which he can be proud of and stands out more as a scene if you recognize him. I come to this film too as an unapologetic Tony Scott defender, always with the sense of him being an underdog even next to his brother Ridley, and that sequence the best in here showing his skill. Top Gun (1986) was propaganda, but it is beautiful to look at whilst the melodramatic and eighties lush tone adds the work where the story and its soundtrack win you. (Even all the jokes about its homoerotic tone (if by accident) adds to this to make it more rewarding). Days of Thunder (1990) is a melodrama, only rather than what were once called “women’s pictures”, it is about male NASCAR racers with Tom Cruise and Michael Rooker’s love-hate relationship as the leads a proto-bromance. The run of films with the likes of Domino (2005) and Déjà vu (2006) that ended Tony Scott’s career, which I need to return to, showed he how interesting a director he was when he went full bore into visual experimentation, some of the most unique of the time and genre, and with Déjà vu’s science fiction premise, producing one of the most unique and mind bending car chases using a form of split screen Brian De Palma would be proud of.

Among these films, The Last Boy Scout is more conventional even next to The Hunger (1983), but this is in mind to how much this film struggled to get finished. Alongside the script from the original Shane Black version being drastically changed, as expected with all script revisions, Damon Wayans and Bruce Willis were hostile to each other, producer Joel Silver steered it to the more conventional action scenes, and Tony Scott’s habit of shooting extensive footage took multiple people to edit it all into final results¹. He however was staying his ground on what he wanted to shoot, so this film if it has an auteur, even if compromised, is his and Shane Black’s together, and you can still see the virtues of both in this. Here Scott is the traditional stylist to a modern day noir, made at a time when Shane Black was a low end in life and feeding off pulp crime paperbacks¹, taking the broken down detective from them and making Joseph Hallenbeck (Willis), the detective at his lowest among others before him crossing with James "Jimmy" Dix (Wayans), a disgraced American football star, finding themselves forced together over one of the former’s protection jobs. This leads to a conspiracy with the US football league and politics, whose flaw in not being fleshed out is explained by how the film went through a long process in being actually completed. There is a lot more cursing than in traditional film noir but humour is literally a self defensive weapon in Shane Black’s world, an effective self defensive maneuver multiple times including “your wife” jokes being able to leave someone defenseless to a broken bottle to the neck. Alongside the setting being Christmas, an obsession for Black, and this feels like his work to the point even Danielle Harris, playing Willis’ thirteen year old daughter, gets one liners.

The interesting thing is knowing, whilst an action film at heart which Joel Silver steered more towards the one liners and action, this has a vein of melancholia in its macho bravado which is explained by the place Shane Black was said to have at the time, one of great depression at a time when he was not part of films with his scripts. This is a film where the one liners are literally self defensive not just to villains but against male anxiety and angst, hiding behind snark to cope through the likes of addiction and the loss of loved ones, With credit to Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans, despite tensions on set, they were two perfect casting choices for a Shane Black script. Willis in particular, in mind to his career’s very erratic history, including the turbulent time even here with Hudson Hawk (1991), is someone capable of a great deal in his roles, someone who could balance pathos and comedy perfectly with his work, taking what was a generic noir protagonist and making him have flesh in this case.

The film would in delicious irony be accused of being woke nowadays. This is lost a little in how much the film plays it safe with car chases and action scenes, the film turned into a production for the box office first, but with Willis’ back story as a secret service agent fired due to a corrupt politician, and corrupt politics and gambling the central themes, it is amazing even if shooting people are the answer in these films how many would not fly in certain parties minds nowadays in how suspicious of authority they are, a film noir trope Shane Black definitely took the heart. Whether it is one of the best of this time is with the caveat that, once you known how nightmarish the production history was, you can see it in the plotting pace, but so much does work. Some of the dialogue is un-pc, which has not aged the film well when they appear, but alongside how rare they are, most of the film shines instead. For a film I was once dismissed, even its inclusions as an action film, including twists involving an unfortunate accident with a helicopter blade, stand out because in spite of the chaos making this film, it gelled together as a rewarding film with too many good one liners, too much interesting pathos and Bruce Willis dancing a jig in the least expected of times.

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1) Who killed The Last Boy Scout? Bruce Willis, Shane Black and the making of an action masterpiece, written by Owen Williams for The Telegraph, published 31st May 2016.