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The Last Boy Scout

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The Last Boy Scout
Last boy scout.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed byTony Scott
Screenplay byShane Black
Story by
  • Shane Black
  • Greg Hicks
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyWard Russell
Edited by
Music byMichael Kamen
Production
companies
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date
  • December 13, 1991 (1991-12-13)
Running time
105 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$43 million[1]
Box office$114.5 million

The Last Boy Scout is a 1991 American buddy action comedy film directed by Tony Scott, written by Shane Black, and produced by Joel Silver. The film stars Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Chelsea Field, Noble Willingham, Taylor Negron and Danielle Harris. The film was released in the United States on December 13, 1991.

Discover more about The Last Boy Scout related topics

Buddy film

Buddy film

The buddy film is a subgenre of adventure and comedy film in which two people are put together and are on an adventure, a quest, or a road trip. The two often contrast in personality, which creates a dynamic onscreen different from a pairing of two people of the opposite gender. The contrast is sometimes accentuated by an ethnic difference between the two. The buddy film is commonplace in American cinema; unlike some other film genres, it endured through the 20th century with different pairings and different themes.

Tony Scott

Tony Scott

Anthony David Leighton Scott was an English film director and producer. He was known for directing highly successful action and thriller films such as Top Gun (1986), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Days of Thunder (1990), The Last Boy Scout (1991), True Romance (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Enemy of the State (1998), Man on Fire (2004), Déjà Vu (2006), and Unstoppable (2010).

Shane Black

Shane Black

Shane Black is an American filmmaker and actor who has written such films as Lethal Weapon, The Monster Squad, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. He is also known as the original creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise. As an actor, Black is best known for his role as Rick Hawkins in Predator (1987).

Joel Silver

Joel Silver

Joel Silver is an American film producer.

Bruce Willis

Bruce Willis

Walter Bruce Willis is a retired American actor. He achieved fame with a leading role on the comedy-drama series Moonlighting (1985–1989) and appeared in over a hundred films, gaining recognition as an action hero after his portrayal of John McClane in the Die Hard franchise (1988–2013) and other roles.

Damon Wayans

Damon Wayans

Damon Kyle Wayans Sr. is an American actor, comedian, producer, and writer. Wayans performed as a comedian and actor throughout the 1980s, including a year long stint on the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live.

Chelsea Field

Chelsea Field

Chelsea Field is an American actress.

Noble Willingham

Noble Willingham

Noble Henry Willingham, Jr. was an American actor who appeared in more than thirty films and in many television shows, including a stint opposite Chuck Norris in Walker, Texas Ranger.

Taylor Negron

Taylor Negron

Brad Stephen "Taylor" Negron was an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his role as Milo in the 1991 buddy cop action comedy film The Last Boy Scout.

Danielle Harris

Danielle Harris

Danielle Andrea Harris is an American actress and film director. She is known as a "scream queen" for her roles in multiple horror films, including four entries in the Halloween franchise as Jamie Lloyd, and the Halloween remake and its sequel as Annie Brackett (2007–09). Other such roles include Tosh in Urban Legend (1998), Belle in Stake Land (2010), and Marybeth Dunston in the Hatchet series (2010–17). In 2012, she was inducted into the Fangoria Hall of Fame.

Plot

During halftime at a televised football game, L.A. Stallions running back Billy Cole receives a phone call from a mysterious man named Milo, who warns him to win the game or he will be killed. Cole ingests PCP and in a drug-induced rage, brings a gun onto the field, shooting three opposing players to reach the end zone before shooting himself in the head. Meanwhile, private investigator Joseph Hallenbeck, a disgraced former Secret Service agent who was once a national hero for saving the president from an assassination attempt, discovers that his wife Sarah is having an affair with his friend and business partner, Mike Matthews. Mike gives Joe an assignment to act as bodyguard for a stripper named Cory. Mike is then killed by a car bomb outside Joe's house.

That night at a local strip club, Joe is approached by Cory's boyfriend, former Stallions quarterback Jimmy Dix, who was banned from the league on gambling charges and alleged drug abuse. After an argument between Joe and Jimmy, an annoyed Jimmy takes Cory from the stage while she is performing. Joe plans to wait outside, where he is knocked out by a team of hitmen. Jimmy and Cory leave the bar in separate cars while Joe overpowers the single hitman left to dispatch him. When Cory is struck from behind and stops to confront the other driver, she is killed by the hitmen. Jimmy is fired upon and pinned down, but is saved by Joe.

At Cory's house, Jimmy and Joe find a taped phone conversation between Senator Calvin Baynard, who is leading a congressional investigation into gambling in sports, and Stallions owner Sheldon Marcone. When the tape is ruined in Joe's faulty car stereo, Jimmy realizes that Cory tried using the tape against Marcone to put Jimmy back on the team, prompting Marcone to send the hitmen. Joe saves Jimmy from another car bomb, and tricks two hitmen into blowing themselves up. However, the explosion destroys the remaining evidence.

Joe reveals to Jimmy that when he was in the Secret Service, he witnessed Baynard torturing a woman in a hotel room and assaulted the senator to intercept the attack. Baynard retaliated by having Joe fired from the Secret Service for refusing to cover up the incident. At Joe's house, Jimmy meets Joe's abrasive daughter Darian. When Joe catches Jimmy attempting to use illegal steroids in the bathroom, Joe kicks him out. As Jimmy leaves, Darian asks him to sign a football trading card, stating that Joe was a fan of Jimmy's and never watched another game after he was banned from the league. He leaves her with the signed card, "To the daughter of the last Boy Scout."

Learning of Mike's affair with Sarah, the police assume Joe killed him and move to make an arrest. Milo, Marcone's top henchman, captures Joe first and shoots a detective using Joe's gun. Marcone explains to Joe that he has been buying Senate votes to legalize sports gambling, but that Baynard tried to blackmail Marcone for $6 million. Aware of Joe's history with Baynard, Marcone explains it would be cheaper to kill the senator and frame Joe for the murder. Joe is taken to a wooded area and forced to hand a briefcase full of money to Baynard's bodyguards, and Marcone's men surreptitiously switch it with a briefcase containing a bomb. Joe is rescued by Jimmy and Darian, and acquires both briefcases after running the bodyguards and Milo off the road. However, Milo survives and while Darian is left to wait for the police, she is abducted by Milo.

Heading to the stadium to rescue Darian, Joe and Jimmy are captured and escorted to Marcone's office. Jimmy creates a diversion, allowing them to fight their way free. Realizing Milo will attempt to shoot Baynard, Joe goes after Milo while sending Jimmy to warn the senator. Grabbing the game ball, Jimmy throws it at Baynard, knocking him down just as Milo starts to open fire. Joe knocks Milo to the edge of the stadium light platform, where SWAT officers shoot him before he falls into the moving rotor blades of a helicopter. The suitcase of money is recovered and Marcone, having escaped with the rigged briefcase, is killed when he opens it at his estate. The next day, Joe and Sarah reconcile, and Joe and Jimmy decide to become partners while having ideas of one-liners.

Discover more about Plot related topics

Running back

Running back

A running back (RB) is a member of the offensive backfield in gridiron football. The primary roles of a running back are to receive handoffs from the quarterback to rush the ball, to line up as a receiver to catch the ball, and block. There are usually one or two running backs on the field for a given play, depending on the offensive formation. A running back may be a halfback, a wingback or a fullback. A running back will sometimes be called a "feature back" if he is the team's starting running back.

Phencyclidine

Phencyclidine

Phencyclidine or phenylcyclohexyl piperidine (PCP), also known as angel dust among other names, is a dissociative anesthetic mainly used recreationally for its significant mind-altering effects. PCP may cause hallucinations, distorted perceptions of sounds, and violent behavior. As a recreational drug, it is typically smoked, but may be taken by mouth, snorted, or injected. It may also be mixed with cannabis or tobacco.

Private investigator

Private investigator

A private investigator, a private detective, or inquiry agent is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private investigators often work for attorneys in civil and criminal cases.

United States Secret Service

United States Secret Service

The United States Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting U.S. political leaders, their families, and visiting heads of state or government. Until 2003, the Secret Service was part of the Department of the Treasury, as the agency was founded in 1865 to combat the then-widespread counterfeiting of U.S. currency.

Quarterback

Quarterback

The quarterback, colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern American football, the quarterback is usually considered the leader of the offense, and is often responsible for calling the play in the huddle. The quarterback also touches the ball on almost every offensive play, and is almost always the offensive player that throws forward passes. When the QB is tackled behind the line of scrimmage, it is called a sack.

Blackmail

Blackmail

Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to family members or associates rather than to the general public. These acts can also involve using threats of physical, mental or emotional harm, or of criminal prosecution, against the victim or someone close to the victim. It is normally carried out for personal gain, most commonly of position, money, or property.

SWAT

SWAT

In the United States, a SWAT team is a police tactical unit that uses specialized or military equipment and tactics. Although they were first created in the 1960s to handle riot control or violent confrontations with criminals, the number and usage of SWAT teams increased in the 1980s and 1990s during the War on Drugs and later in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In the United States by 2005, SWAT teams were deployed 50,000 times every year, almost 80% of the time to serve search warrants, most often for narcotics. By 2015 that number had increased to nearly 80,000 times a year. SWAT teams are increasingly equipped with military-type hardware and trained to deploy against threats of terrorism, for crowd control, hostage taking, and in situations beyond the capabilities of ordinary law enforcement, sometimes deemed "high-risk".

Cast

Discover more about Cast related topics

Bruce Willis

Bruce Willis

Walter Bruce Willis is a retired American actor. He achieved fame with a leading role on the comedy-drama series Moonlighting (1985–1989) and appeared in over a hundred films, gaining recognition as an action hero after his portrayal of John McClane in the Die Hard franchise (1988–2013) and other roles.

Damon Wayans

Damon Wayans

Damon Kyle Wayans Sr. is an American actor, comedian, producer, and writer. Wayans performed as a comedian and actor throughout the 1980s, including a year long stint on the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live.

Chelsea Field

Chelsea Field

Chelsea Field is an American actress.

Danielle Harris

Danielle Harris

Danielle Andrea Harris is an American actress and film director. She is known as a "scream queen" for her roles in multiple horror films, including four entries in the Halloween franchise as Jamie Lloyd, and the Halloween remake and its sequel as Annie Brackett (2007–09). Other such roles include Tosh in Urban Legend (1998), Belle in Stake Land (2010), and Marybeth Dunston in the Hatchet series (2010–17). In 2012, she was inducted into the Fangoria Hall of Fame.

Halle Berry

Halle Berry

Halle Maria Berry is an American actress. She began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to roles in The Flintstones (1994) and Bulworth (1998) as well as the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Bruce McGill

Bruce McGill

Bruce Travis McGill is an American actor. He worked with director Michael Mann in the films The Insider (1999), Ali (2001), and Collateral (2004). McGill's other notable film roles include Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day in John Landis's Animal House, Sheriff Dean Farley in My Cousin Vinny, Matuzak in Timecop, Reverend Larson in Shallow Hal, Gene Revell in The Sum of All Fears, Edwin Stanton in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Lt. Brooks in Ride Along and its sequel Ride Along 2.

Chelcie Ross

Chelcie Ross

Chelcie Claude Ross is an American character actor, most known for Above the Law, Major League, Basic Instinct, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Hoosiers, Rudy, Trouble with the Curve and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Clarence Felder

Clarence Felder

Clarence Felder is an American character actor who has starred in films and on television, and co-starred in ten Broadway productions. He is also a playwright and director. His play Captain Felder's Cannon was adapted as the feature film All for Liberty (2009), in which he starred.

Frank Collison

Frank Collison

Frank Collison is an American actor known to television audiences as the hapless telegrapher Horace Bing in the series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

Billy Blanks

Billy Blanks

William Wayne Blanks is an American fitness personality, martial artist, actor, and the creator of the Tae Bo exercise program.

Eddie Griffin

Eddie Griffin

Edward Rubin Griffin is an American comedian and actor. He is best known for portraying Eddie Sherman in the sitcom Malcolm & Eddie, the title character in the 2002 comedy film Undercover Brother, and Tiberius Jefferson "T.J." Hicks in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999) and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005). He also portrayed Orpheus in Scary Movie 3 (2003) and voiced Richard Pryor on Black Dynamite (2012–2015). Griffin was ranked at number 62 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.

Jack Kehler

Jack Kehler

Jack Kehler was an American character actor. He was best known for his role of Marty, a landlord in The Big Lebowski. He also appeared in Men in Black II, The Last Boy Scout, Point Break, Wyatt Earp and Waterworld.

Production

Development and writing

The film was based on an original script by Shane Black. He wrote the script after having taken a two-year break from writing, triggered in part by the end of a relationship. The Geffen Film Company outbid other companies, paying a record $1.75 million for the script, with over a $1 million guaranteed up front.[2] Black later recalled:

I was busy mourning my life and, in many ways, the loss of my first real love. I didn’t feel much like doing anything except smoking cigarettes and reading paperbacks. All things come around. Time passed and eventually I sat down and transformed some of that bitterness into a character, the central focus of a private eye story which became The Last Boy Scout. Writing that script was a very cathartic experience, one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I spent so much time alone working on that. Days which I wouldn’t speak. Three, four days where I maybe said a couple words. It was a wonderfully intense time where my focus was better than it’s ever been. And I was rewarded so handsomely ($1.75 million) for that script, it felt like a vindication and like I was back on track.[3]

Roger Ebert, commenting on the script, said "The original screenplay for The Last Boy Scout set a record for its purchase price; that was probably because of the humor of the locker-room dialogue, since the plot itself could have been rewritten out of the Lethal Weapon movies by any film school grad."[4]

Joel Silver was guaranteed $1 million to produce.[2] Silver said in a Q&A for The Nice Guys (2016) that Shane Black's original title was Die Hard. Silver asked if he could take the title for a project he was working on at the time called Nothing Lasts Forever, which eventually became Die Hard (1988).

Shane Black and Tony Scott both said in later years how the original script was far better than the final film.[5][6]

Filming

The Last Boy Scout was filmed in 90 days between March 11 and June 9, 1991.[7] The movie had a very troubled production. Conflict and arguments flared between Joel Silver, Bruce Willis and Tony Scott. Although they partner up in the film, Willis and Damon Wayans hated working with each other.[8] Silver was described as "insane, with long, horrible fits of sanity,” and was compared to a fighter pilot riding as a passenger. “As soon as you hit a little bit of turbulence, he’s right away going to throw the guy out of the window and take over the steering.” Taylor Negron, who played Milo, described Silver as extremely hands-on in every aspect of the production.[9]

Assistant director James Skotchdopole attributed the tension on-set to an “overabundance of alpha males on that project. Bruce was at the height of his stardom, so was Joel, so was Tony and so was Shane. There were a lot of people who had a lot of opinions about what to do. There were some heated, early-Nineties, testosterone charged personalities on the line. It was a ‘charged environment,’ shall we say.” Writer Shane Black had to wrestle with the script. “I was forced to do more rewriting on that movie than on anything else I’ve done. There was tremendous pressure from the studio to get Bruce Willis and have this be a follow-up to Die Hard. He was reluctant, and rightly so: ‘This whole movie is about me saving my wife. I just did that in Die Hard.’ So they said, ‘OK, let’s minimize the wife and, and while we’re at it, add a big finale.' There was a general pressure to somehow make it bigger.”[10]

More problems emerged during post-production, when the original cut of the film turned out be a "borderline unwatchable workprint." Different editors were hired in an attempt to address Scott's tendency for filming excessive coverage with multiple cameras. Editor Mark Helfrich described sorting through "mountains of raw material" to edit the first cut: "There was more footage shot for The Last Boy Scout than on any film I had ever worked on." He recalled with incredulity that the work of previous editors appeared to have been rejected, taken apart and put back into the daily reels: "There were still splices all over the place." Expert action movie editor Mark Goldblatt, who also worked on the film, recalls it as one of the most painful and frustrating experiences of his entire career, and refuses to discuss it in interviews, although he did mention in a podcast interview that several other editors were hired and then fired before him, and that Warner Bros. began testing the movie before it was completely finished. Studio executives fretted about the expanding budget, while less-than-enthusiastic reactions from a test screening audience, as well as the unlikeable character played by Willis, did little to allay these concerns.[11]

When editor Stuart Baird was hired, the film finally took a positive turn. Baird had been brought in to help re-edit other troubled productions, including Tango & Cash (1989) and Demolition Man (1993). Some later cuts were done with the film's graphic scenes after it was originally rated NC-17, which explains quick-cut edits in some of the death scenes in the film.[12][13][14]

Music

The film's score was composed and conducted by Michael Kamen (who also scored Hudson Hawk that year), his only work for Tony Scott. Bill Medley performed the song "Friday Night's A Great Night For Football," written by Steve Dorff and John Bettis, on screen during the opening credits (the song is also reprised over the end titles); the song was released as a CD single by Curb Records.[15]

On August 25, 2015, La-La Land Records released a limited edition soundtrack album featuring most of Kamen's score, plus Medley's song.[16]

Discover more about Production related topics

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called him "the best-known film critic in America."

Joel Silver

Joel Silver

Joel Silver is an American film producer.

Nothing Lasts Forever (Thorp novel)

Nothing Lasts Forever (Thorp novel)

Nothing Lasts Forever is a 1979 action thriller novel by American author Roderick Thorp, a sequel to his 1966 novel The Detective. The novel is mostly known through its 1988 film adaptation Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis. In 2012, the book was brought back into print and released as an ebook for the 24th anniversary of the film.

Die Hard

Die Hard

Die Hard is a 1988 American action film directed by John McTiernan and written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. It stars Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, and Bonnie Bedelia, with Reginald VelJohnson, William Atherton, Paul Gleason, and Hart Bochner in supporting roles. Die Hard follows New York City police detective John McClane (Willis) who is caught up in a terrorist takeover of a Los Angeles skyscraper while visiting his estranged wife.

Damon Wayans

Damon Wayans

Damon Kyle Wayans Sr. is an American actor, comedian, producer, and writer. Wayans performed as a comedian and actor throughout the 1980s, including a year long stint on the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live.

Mark Helfrich (film editor)

Mark Helfrich (film editor)

Mark Helfrich is an American film editor and director. He is an elected member of American Cinema Editors (ACE) and serves on the board as an associate director. Helfrich has edited over thirty films such as Stone Cold (1991), Showgirls (1995) with Mark Goldblatt. Helfrich is also the primary editor for director Brett Ratner's films, such as Money Talks (1997), Rush Hour (1998), The Family Man (2000), Rush Hour 2 (2001), Red Dragon (2002), and After the Sunset (2004), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), Kites (2010) with Mark Goldblatt and Julia Wong. Helfrich directed Good Luck Chuck.

Mark Goldblatt

Mark Goldblatt

Mark Goldblatt is an Academy Award-nominated American film editor and film director and president emeritus of the American Cinema Editors.

Demolition Man (film)

Demolition Man (film)

Demolition Man is a 1993 American science fiction action film directed by Marco Brambilla in his directorial debut. It stars Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, and Nigel Hawthorne. Stallone is John Spartan, a risk-taking police officer who has a reputation for causing destruction while carrying out his work. After a failed attempt to rescue hostages from evil crime lord Simon Phoenix (Snipes), they are both sentenced to be cryogenically frozen in 1996. Phoenix is thawed for a parole hearing in 2032, but escapes. Society has changed and all crime has seemingly been eliminated. Unable to deal with a criminal as dangerous as Phoenix, the authorities awaken Spartan to help capture him again. The story makes allusions to many other works including Aldous Huxley's 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World, and H. G. Wells's The Sleeper Awakes.

Michael Kamen

Michael Kamen

Michael Arnold Kamen was an American composer, orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, songwriter, and session musician.

Hudson Hawk

Hudson Hawk

Hudson Hawk is a 1991 American action comedy film directed by Michael Lehmann. Bruce Willis stars in the title role and also co-wrote both the story and the theme song. Danny Aiello, Andie MacDowell, James Coburn, David Caruso, Lorraine Toussaint, Frank Stallone, Sandra Bernhard and Richard E. Grant are also featured.

Bill Medley

Bill Medley

William Thomas Medley is an American singer and songwriter, best known as one half of The Righteous Brothers. He is noted for his bass-baritone voice, exemplified in songs such as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". Medley produced a number of the duo's songs, including "Unchained Melody" and "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration".

John Bettis

John Bettis

John Gregory Bettis is an American lyricist. He was originally part of the band Spectrum, which also featured Richard and Karen Carpenter. He wrote the lyrics for "Top of the World", a hit for both Lynn Anderson and The Carpenters. He wrote several more hits for The Carpenters, including "Only Yesterday", "Goodbye to Love" and "Yesterday Once More". He later wrote hits for other artists including Madonna, Michael Jackson, The Pointer Sisters, Diana Ross, Jennifer Warnes, Peabo Bryson, George Strait ("Heartland"), Ronnie Milsap, and Barbara Mandrell. 38 Special New Kids on the Block Barbra Streisand Whitney Houston

Reception

Box office

The film under-performed expectations given the star power and hype surrounding the then record price paid for the screenplay by Shane Black ($1.75 million).[17] It grossed $7.9 million in its opening weekend, and the total gross in the United States and Canada was $59.5 million.[18][19][20] Internationally, the film grossed $55 million[21] for a worldwide gross of $114.5 million. Reviews were mixed, and some critics cited the Christmas time release for such a violent film as a reason for its somewhat underwhelming box office.[22][23][24] Although the film was not a blockbuster, it helped Bruce Willis recover his star status after the disastrous Hudson Hawk and became hugely popular in the video rental market.[25][26]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 46% based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "The Last Boy Scout is as explosive, silly, and fun as it does represent the decline of the buddy-cop genre."[27] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[28] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[29]

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, saying it was "a superb example of what it is: a glossy, skillful, cynical, smart, utterly corrupt and vilely misogynistic action thriller."[4] Owen Gleiberman praised it as "a cheerfully disreputable buddy thriller that also happens to be one of the most entertaining movies of the season ... [and] gives the actors room to stretch out."[22] Variety described the plot as "a haze of barely connected story lines about political corruption, pro-football, gambling, infidelity, and blackmail [where] all the questions are answered by another car chase, smashing someone in the face or shooting someone in the forehead."[24] In a highly critical review, Desson Howe of The Washington Post called it "the filmic equivalent of a hate crime. ... It's mindless, anti-civilization formula for boys who can't get enough."[23]

Retrospective reviews praised the writing, the direction, and the chemistry between Willis and Wayans, and some critics noted it as one of the best films in Scott's catalog.[30][10][31] In 2022, Alan Sepinwall from Rolling Stone included The Last Boy Scout on The Best of Bruce Willis: 10 Memorables TV and Movie Performances and said: "The neo-noir thriller The Last Boy Scout is on some level (also) trash — bookended by wildly over-the-top action sequences at football stadiums — elevated not only by director Tony Scott’s self-awareness of how ridiculous it all is, but by the sheer force of Willis’ performance as a disgraced Secret Service agent turned seedy private detective"[32]

Accolades

The film was nominated for two MTV Movie Awards.[33]

  • Best Action Sequence – For the helicopter blade sequence
  • Best On-Screen Duo – Bruce Willis & Damon Wayans

Discover more about Reception related topics

Hudson Hawk

Hudson Hawk

Hudson Hawk is a 1991 American action comedy film directed by Michael Lehmann. Bruce Willis stars in the title role and also co-wrote both the story and the theme song. Danny Aiello, Andie MacDowell, James Coburn, David Caruso, Lorraine Toussaint, Frank Stallone, Sandra Bernhard and Richard E. Grant are also featured.

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang. Although the name "Rotten Tomatoes" connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes in disapproval of a poor stage performance, the original inspiration comes from a scene featuring tomatoes in the Canadian film Léolo (1992).

Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged. Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999, and is owned by Fandom, Inc. as of 2023.

CinemaScore

CinemaScore

CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called him "the best-known film critic in America."

Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for Variety magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with Peter Debruge. Previously, Gleiberman wrote for Entertainment Weekly from 1990 until 2014. From 1981 to 1989, he wrote for The Phoenix.

Variety (magazine)

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American media company owned by Penske Media Corporation. The company was founded by Sime Silverman in New York City in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville. In 1933 it added Daily Variety, based in Los Angeles, to cover the motion-picture industry. Variety.com features entertainment news, reviews, box office results, cover stories, videos, photo galleries and features, plus a credits database, production charts and calendar, with archive content dating back to 1905.

The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area.

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its coverage of rock music and political reporting by Hunter S. Thompson. In the 1990s, the magazine broadened and shifted its focus to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, and popular music. It has since returned to its traditional mix of content, including music, entertainment, and politics.

Source: "The Last Boy Scout", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, January 6th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Boy_Scout.

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References
  1. ^ The Last Boy Scout at the American Film Institute Catalog
  2. ^ a b Eller, Claudia (April 25, 1990). "Geffen Co. comes prepared, pays record $1.75-mil for 'Last Boy Scout' script". Variety. p. 7.
  3. ^ Bauer, Erik (1 December 2014). ""I Like Violence" – Shane Black". Creative Screenwriting.
  4. ^ a b Ebert, Roger (December 13, 1991). "The Last Boy Scout". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 2012-10-10. Retrieved 2021-01-02.
  5. ^ "Shane Black Reveals The Hero Of 'Predator' & It's Not Arnold Schwarzenegger, Talks Time Travel Horror Script And More". 9 June 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  6. ^ http://movie-scripts.net/L/last_boy_scout(1991).pdf
  7. ^ "Last Boy Scout, The (1991)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2016-01-18.
  8. ^ Taylor, Larry (17 May 2016). "'The Last Boy Scout', Shane Black and Tony Scott's LA Miracle". Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  9. ^ "A Talk With Taylor Negron - Retro Junk Article". Retrieved 4 April 2017.
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