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| images courtesy of Arrow Video |
In virtually every business, there is what’s known as a “Seal of Quality.” For example, if you grew up in the 1980s playing Nintendo, and you saw the Konami logo appear on the screen for a video game you rented for the weekend, it was safe assume you made a good decision. This is the same company that brought us Castlevania and Contra, after all. In the world of movies, and especially in the buddy comedy genre, there are four words that almost universally mean that you’re about to experience something special. Those four words are: “Written by Shane Black.” He’s the man whose screenplays have produced decade-defining buddy comedies for the last 40 years. In the 1980s, there was Lethal Weapon. For the 2000s, it was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The 2010s gave us The Nice Guys. And in the 1990s, it was The Last Boy Scout.
Virtually all the Shane Black movies follow a loose formula that’s designed to pull two polar opposite personalities together, plunge them into a conspiracy, and watch as the two men brought together by circumstance find their common ground while cracking jokes and trying to stay alive. Usually the mystery seems small in the beginning, but slowly reveals itself to be descendant from a monolith of power. In Lethal Weapon, a lowly prostitute who jumps to her death becomes the catalyst that undoes a major drug trafficking ring with roots amongst our own black op soldiers in Vietnam. In The Nice Guys, a porn star dying in a car accident suddenly has two guns for hire untangling a web of lies that leads to Detroit’s Big 3 and the corrupt politicians willing to help them kill to make a buck instead of a catalytic converter.
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| images courtesy of Arrow Video |
The Last Boy Scout begins with the darkest, most rain-soaked and foreboding football game ever put on film. Billy Blanks (yes, the Tae Bo guy) is under pressure to win a football game at any cost. He manages to get the ball and run it down field. Faced with the certainty of a gut-rearranging spear tackle, he suddenly pulls a gun from his waistband and starts shooting. Now, why in the hell would someone do that? That’s the question that pulls the rip cord on this grimy-slick thriller that’s directed by none other than Tony Scott, who has a way of telling stories like this with the exact right amount of sleaze to make something that could only happen in a movie feel credible and authentic. Every back alley and character in this movie is on the cusp of falling apart at the seams, possibly from the weight of carrying so many dark secrets, or maybe it’s just the booze tearing away the fragile facade of civility.
Now that we’ve got the core question that sets up the mystery, let’s introduce our duo. The always dependable Bruce Willis plays Joe Hallenbeck, a police officer who returns home from an undercover stint in Vegas to play his part in the funniest “cop catches his wife cheating” scene in the history of movies. This scene is great because it not only works as comedy and suspense, but serves as organic character development. It shows how insightful and observant Joe Hallenbeck is as a protagonist, while also revealing his flaws as a husband and father, and its final surprise reminds us there’s still a mystery that needs to be solved, and Joe might just need someone’s help to solve it. Enter Damon Wayans as Jimmy Dix, a disgraced football player who used to be on top of the world, only to bury his potential in a pile of drugs and gambling. The funny thing about potential is that it’s kind of like a slasher villain: It never stays buried.
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| images courtesy of Arrow Video |
The two men meet at a strip club because Joe is having his celebratory “wife stepped out on me” glass of whiskey, and Jimmy just happens to be a former professional athlete in love with a current professional stripper. But who can blame him when the stripper happens to be Halle Berry? And who wouldn’t want revenge after seeing her gunned down with enough slow motion blood letting to give Sam Peckinpah a posthumous erection? It’s from this point that the Shane Black formula works its magic. The mystery of the dead stripper, the gun-happy football suicide, and the backroom sports gambling empire is officially under way. Willis and Wayans are great together, trading barbs and character insight with joyous venom. Shane Black understands pacing, and always peppers in moments of true male bonding between the action. It’s during one of these scenes that the movie gets an unexpected third buddy in Danielle Harris, fresh off the Halloween sequels that made her a household name. She plays Joe’s daughter, Darian, and slings F-bombs and zingers with the guys like a pro. In fact, during the exclusive interview with Harris on this new disc release from Arrow, Willis approached her after a scene and said, “Don’t upstage me, kid.” Now that’s a compliment.
One thing no actor or director of a Shane Black movie can ever do is upstage the screenplay. The reason so many Shane Black screenplays are made into masterpieces is because, in addition to iconic casts of characters we are sure to remember, the plots are airtight in a way modern Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to write. If the end result is the proof in the pudding, Tony Scott understood this, and simply let his usual style present the script with the best performances and visual stimuli he could muster. It works beautifully. The cinematography by Ward Russell makes excellent use of shadows, giving the entire movie the look of contemporary films noir; almost like a Raymond Chandler novel got caught snorting lines off dad’s secret stash of naughty magazines. I used the descriptor “grimy-slick” earlier, and I think it’s the most appropriate way to assess this film. The new 4K transfer from Arrow Video really allows the audience to soak up this atmosphere and enjoy it to its fullest, accompanied by a beautifully mixed Dolby Atmos track. I’ve been watching this movie since it was first released on VHS in 1991, and I assure you The Last Boy Scout has never looked this good.
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| images courtesy of Arrow Video |
If you’re a fan of buddy comedies, The Last Boy Scout is mandatory viewing. You may even own it already, but you’ve still never seen it like this. Arrow’s transfer is truly impeccable. The opening football scene is alive with deep blacks and shadows to the point where only the eyes of a killer are visible amidst the clattering of rain and the drops of water hanging from his helmet. It gives you a true appreciation for the artist that was Tony Scott, and brings into focus what we lost when he succumbed to depression and took his own life, much like the football player backed into a corner of his own making. As we analyze his actions throughout the film and find ourselves still wondering “why” even as the answers come into focus, the legacy of Tony Scott and its sudden abrupt end has us asking the same question. We will always miss him and cherish his best work, because just like those slasher villains and weapons grade potential, the power of the movies is that Tony Scott refuses to stay buried. Thank God for that.
- Blake O. Kleiner