The Last Boy Scout (1991) Warner Bros./Action RT: 105 minutes Rated R (pervasive strong violence and language throughout, nudity, sexual references, drug use, child in peril) Director: Tony Scott Screenplay: Shane Black Music: Michael Kamen Cinematography: Ward Russell Release date: December 13, 1991 (US) Cast: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Chelsea Field, Noble Willingham, Taylor Negron, Danielle Harris, Halle Berry, Bruce McGill, Badja Djola, Kim Coates, Chelcie Ross, Joe Santos, Clarence Felder, Tony Longo, Frank Collison, Bill Medley, Billy Blanks, Eddie Griffin, Jack Kehler, Ryan Cutrona, Michael Papajohn, Manny Perry, Rick Ducommun, Morris Chestnut. Box Office: $55M (US)/$114.5M (World)
Rating: *** ½
I had a difficult time deciding whether The Last Boy Scout is a Holiday Movie or Kick-Ass Actioner. I took some time to think on it. It was the hardest ten seconds of my life. I ultimately decided it’s both. It takes place around Christmas AND it’s a slamming action movie. The plot is dopey, but it doesn’t matter because it’s merely a backdrop for some incredible (and incredibly violent!) action set-pieces. Isn’t that what really matters in the end?
The Last Boy Scout opens with a scene that depicts something that I’ve always wanted to see happen at a professional football game. During a game, Los Angeles Stallions star running back Billy Cole (fitness personality Billy Blanks) receives a threatening phone call telling him that he’d better make more touchdowns or else. Cole steps out on the field in a drug-induced rage, intercepts the ball and starts running towards the end zone. He pulls a gun from his waistband and open fires on the opposing players. He takes out three before taking himself out. That’s one way to make a touchdown, I guess. Either way, it sets the tone for the main action.
Joe Hallenbeck (Willis, Die Hard), an ex-Secret Service agent turned private investigator, is a self-loathing, alcoholic loser with a teenage daughter (Harris, Halloween 4 & 5) who hates him and a wife (Field, The Dark Half) who’s screwing his best friend/business colleague Mike (McGill, Wildcats). When he discovers this, he punches Mike in the gut before accepting a job to protect “exotic dancer” Cory (Berry, Executive Decision) from some unspecified threat. Seconds later, Mike gets blown up in his car. What the f***?
Joe goes to the strip club where Cory dances and is confronted by her jealous boyfriend Jimmy Dix (Wayans, Mo’ Money) who demands to know what’s going on. Jimmy used to play for the Stallions, but got banned from the league for gambling and drug use. Now he spends his day and nights drinking, popping pills and feeling sorry for himself. He doesn’t get any information out of Joe; however, he learns how much trouble Cory is in after she’s gunned down by professional hitmen.
Predictably, Joe and Jimmy team up to find out who’s behind the murders and why. It turns out Cory was in possession of evidence implicating two powerful people, Stallions owner Shelly Marcone (Willingham, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) and Senator Baynard (Ross, Major League), in a corruption scandal involving the legalization of sports gambling. She planned to use it to blackmail Marcone to get Jimmy his old job back. A man in his position can’t have that so he had her killed. Now he has to deal with two more threats, Joe and Jimmy.
It’s Marcone’s good luck that Joe is one of the guys after him. He has history with Baynard; he’s the one that got Joe fired from his previous gig. He punched out the senator when he caught him assaulting a sex worker. Marcone plans to kill Baynard and frame Joe for it. He sends his top henchman, a sadistic gay guy named Milo (Negron, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), to put the plan in motion by abducting Joe from his home and killing a cop with his gun. He didn’t count on Jimmy and Joe’s daughter Darien showing up to f*** things up.
It may seem like I dropped a lot of plot spoilers here, but what I’m actually doing is helping you make sense of the ridiculous plot. I love The Last Boy Scout as an action movie, but it’s dumb. Here’s a perfect example. Remember when I mentioned Billy Cole receiving a threatening phone call ordering him to make more touchdowns? If professional gamblers are looking to fix the game, wouldn’t it make more sense for Billy to throw the game? It seems to me the bad guys would have a better shot at making money by betting on the opposing team. Maybe I don’t understand the mechanics of sports gambling, but this seems like a giant plot hole to me. You could drive a whole fleet of Mack trucks through it. The rest of the film isn’t much smarter. Its IQ never once exceeds double-digits.
Directed by Tony Scott (Beverly Hills Cop II) and written by Shane Black (Lethal Weapon), The Last Boy Scout is a loud, wild, flashy and super-violent actioner that rarely stops long enough for the viewer to think about the story too much. It’s custom made for action junkies. It has many cool scenes like when Joe arrives on the scene just seconds after Cory is turned into Swiss cheese. He runs down the street with both guns blazing while Jimmy rams his car into one of the shooters, trapping him between two cars. Joe comes along and shoots the thug in the back of the head. It’s always good to make sure the job’s done right.
In another scene, Joe asks one of his captors (Coates, Innocent Blood) for a cigarette and a light. The creep punches him in the jaw instead of lighting the cigarette. Joe asks for another, but warns the guy not to touch him again or he’ll kill him. The thug is obviously learning disabled because he does the same thing again. Joe makes good on his promise and punches the guy right in the nose, forcing the bone into his brain and killing him instantly. Then he casually takes another cigarette and lights it with the dead guy’s lighter while his partner (Collison, Wild at Heart) freaks out.
The characters in The Last Boy Scout are really something else. The “heroes” aren’t all that heroic. Some might argue that they’re no better than the bad guys they’re after. I would say they’re slightly better, but only because they’re on the right side of the law (theoretically speaking). Bruce delivers a great performance as the miserable, burnt-out PI. He was born to play Joe Hallenbeck. Audiences didn’t know what to make of his character at the time. They never saw Bruce in this mode. Remember, it came out a few years before Die Hard with a Vengeance. Damon is surprisingly good as the sidekick. It’s hard to believe he’s the same guy who played Homey the Clown on the comedy sketch series In Living Color. He has a few funny bits (LOVE that Prince imitation!), but he tempers them with more dramatic moments like when he talks about the accident that claimed the lives of his wife and unborn son. He and Bruce have solid chemistry.
You can tell Negron is having a blast playing a seriously sadistic villain. Willingham crushes it as the redneck owner of the football team. Field has some good scenes as the wife who still cares about her husband even if he can’t show his emotions. Harris is awesome as Darien, a girl who’s definitely her father’s daughter. She’s a gutsy one too with the way she inserts herself into the action and chaos in order to save her dad’s ass even though he’s a “f*** up” (her words, not mine). Joe Santos (The Rockford Files) does solid work as the cop who’s not exactly a fan of Joe’s.
The action scenes are well orchestrated even with all the frenetic editing by Stuart Baird, Mark Goldblatt and Mark Helfrich. It actually suits the movie tonally speaking. Scott excels in movies that assault the senses, but I didn’t mind it in The Last Boy Scout. It’s just so bloody entertaining. It has an exciting score by Michael Kamen not to mention a rocking theme song (“Friday Night’s a Great Night for Football”) by Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers. It also appeals to my secret/not secret aggressive side, the part of me that loves seeing really awful people get what they richly deserve, violent and bloody deaths. A movie like The Last Boy Scout provides an excellent opportunity to blow off some steam and cheer for “heroes” who aren’t that upstanding, they’re just the lesser of the evils. I’d rather have a bunch of Joe Hallenbecks running the streets than any of the real scumbags we meet in this awesome kick-ass action movie.
FINAL THOUGHT: In the words of those brilliant 20th century philosophers Beavis and Butthead, “Uh huh huh, that was cool!”
