#30 — The Last Boy Scout
This is an illustrated countdown of my 49 1/2 most essential action movies. We’re in the top 30 now, which is a pretty big deal, but #31–49 1/2 are a big deal too. Last week I talked about a mulleted, truck stop cowboy masterpiece called Road House.
The Last Boy Scout is the first Tony Scott film on my countdown, and also the first penned by one of our great action storytellers, Shane Black. It’s a perfect marriage of dysfunctional affection and unbridled explosion. Tony Scott’s visual flair lives under the shadow of his brother, but this a great looking movie where every conversation comes with a side order of gun smoke and flames.
It’s starts with a Bill Medley performed football promo, with a rock ’n roll chorus of “Fri-day NIGHT’S, a great NIGHT for FOOT-ball!” and it gets stuck in my head no matter how much I hate the game itself. You succumb to it, much like all of America’s pastimes — Star Wars movies, competitive eating, and brutally violent sports that ignite the pleasure centers of men’s brains. We see a darkly lit football field dramatically cast in blue hues and pouring rain, and it looks more like a SEAL training exercise than a Stallions game. Tae Bo expert Billy Blanks is a star running back, and he’s being coerced into winning the game or facing dire consequences. So he makes a drug-induced charge to the end-zone, pulling a gun from under his uniform and literally shooting his opposition all the way to a suicidal touchdown. Tony Scott has transformed a football field into a battlefield, and — intentionally or not — made literal the hyper-masculine mindset of sports figures as warriors.
I really love the title of this movie. It’s splashy and heroic, but in kind of a sarcastic way that conveys the overall tone of the film. Joe Hallenbeck (Willis) is “The Last Boy Scout”, but you could take that a couple different ways. Usually something referred to as the last of its kind is a lamentation or wistful remembrance of a bygone era. The last action hero, the last of the V-8 intercepters, the last samurai — but the characters and tone we’re presented with here indicate that maybe those old fashioned notions of heroism and duty were fraudulent and maybe society has collectively decided they’re no longer needed. Or maybe “boy scout” is just a term of endearment for a flawed man that hasn’t lost his moral compass, but is having a hard time trying to course correct his broken life. Either way, I think it’s perfect.
Hallenbeck’s unjust fall from grace also parallels the trials and tribulations of washed up athletes, like Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans). Sports icons that fade in time or fizzle out before fully realizing their potential carry a universally human fear of mortality, loss of time, and wasted opportunities. Jimmy Dix is perfectly believable and sympathetic as a former quarterback with a golden arm and an addiction to painkillers. Wayans gives a star-making performance — which weirdly brought back an old memory of being forced to watch Major Payne at a friends house and realizing it was the only other thing I’d seen him in. I didn’t realize he could be this good. He matches Willis’ peak smarminess with his own brand of jovial self-deprecation and an underdog sense of courage that Black would utilize again later with Robert Downey Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. He wears outfits that would make Russel Westbrook jealous, and he strikes a perfect balance between funny, cool, and sometimes pathetic.
His pairing with Willis is one of my favorite of the genre, perhaps rivaling the latter’s team-up with Samuel L. Jackson in Die Hard With A Vengeance. Their every interaction is an acid-tinged ribbing, masking any mutual respect or affection they might have for each other. Shane Black is a master of this sort of thing, and I think this is some of his best work.
Another nice touch about their relationship is that Hallenbeck’s daughter reveals to Jimmy that her dad idolized him before his career downfall. They say “never meet your heroes”, but maybe the takeaway is that we shouldn’t have “heroes” in the first place and simply look to uplift each other instead. Jimmy signs her trading card “To the daughter of the last boy scout”. It’s sarcastically addressed to Hallenbeck, but could also be self-referential. Jimmy similarly sees himself as a has-been failure, and the running theme of endangered virtue continues. It also reminds me how we can easily spot the flaws in others, but be blind to our own. Jimmy gives an emotionally charged monologue about his failures and Joe simply waits for him to finish before curtly stating “when you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, the front door’s that way”. Brutal.
I guess one sore spot this movie will never age out of is the same one that troubles True Lies. Its obsession with masculine perspectives turns women into empty vessels that only get to be included in things if they follow the rules. Joe’s Wife is introduced cheating on him with his best (as in ONLY) “friend” because he’s never around, and her arc — if you can call it that — is that Joe needs to get mad enough about it to curse her out, proving that he does indeed care for her so she can stop cheating on him. A classic Look-What-You-Made-Me-Do-ism. This is obviously absurd, and only alleviated slightly by the heightened tone and humor that renders everything as such. Sort of like when a movie features precocious kids that swear like sailors. It’s designed to get a rise out of us.
If you could Magic Marker stuff like this out, you might have something more widely accepted as a classic, but I’m sure a lot of people feel that way about their own lives too. Maybe Joe will change. Maybe he goes on to form a healthy professional partnership with Jimmy, learns to treat his wife with some dignity, masters the art of patience with his daughter, and dances a jig — not in celebration of knocking a man into helicopter blades (I’ll make an allowance for this because he was a bad man and it’s very funny) but because of his renewed spirit. There’s a sense of new, better horizons in store at the end.
I revisited this movie last summer, and I knew immediately I had to put it on my list. It’s one of the rare action movies where the dialogue sustains and energizes the experience as much as the action — perhaps even more-so. It’s honestly great to write an entry where I don’t talk about explosions and such (which are great btw, everything is lensed beautifully), because the characters just keep everything humming. The two leads are among the gold standard for casting in an action film, and I think it’s amazing how much mileage Black has gotten out of this very specific dynamic, spanning multiple eras from Lethal Weapon to The Nice Guys.
I love that he can present characters at their rock bottom and still convey an affection for them in the writing. You don’t necessarily want to be these people, but you want to see them live to become something better. This is my preferred alternative to the Bad Boys brand of Buddy-Action blockbustering. It has a sports car landing in a fancy LA swimming pool, a football player riding a horse, and Bruce Willis shooting a gun through a hand puppet, which is all very Bad Boys in nature — but it’s also sharp-witted storytelling with some glimmers of humanity hiding under the veneer of macho posturing. I consider it among the best work of almost everyone involved.
