The Last Boy Scout

Review Date: June 7, 1999

Rating:

Just rented this movie Friday night and watched it for the first time in several years. Based on my vague recollection of the movie--before having watched it again--I had given it a rating of 3 1/2 footballs. I was wrong. This is a 4 football movie, with one of the more shocking opening scenes you'll see in a movie and non-stop action throughout. Halle Berry is good--albeit briefly as her character dies early in the film--and Damon Wayans, who at the time this movie came out was fairly hot Hollywood property, though he's now relegated to doing bad jokes on 1-800-Collect commercials, is great in this flick as a sort of "misfit partner" to Bruce's ex-Secret Service-agent-turned-Private-Dick-with-bitchy-wife-and-psycho-daughter.

I mentioned a shocking opening scene, and if you've seen this movie you know what I mean. A transparent "Friday Night Football", cheesy rock theme, and fake team names covering up the fact that they couldn't get the rights to use NFL copyrights or just didn't bother to try. The football game ensues, in which the LA Stallions are losing to another fictional team. During halftime, the Stallions' star running-back gets a phone call warning that he'll be history if the Stallions lose. In the final play of the game, needing a touchdown to win, he pulls a gun and blows away several defenders on his way to the end zone, falls to his knees, pulls of his helmet, and says "Ain't life a bitch" before blowing his own brains out. Now THAT'S a movie!

And that's just the opening scene. We're introduced to Bruce's character passed out drunk in the back seat of his beat-up car and having indignities performed on him by a group of young boys. When he wakes up, he starts the car, looks at himself in the rearview, calls himself a loser, and assures himself "You're going to fail."

OK. I guess we've realized that this guy isn't real happy with his life or himself. I think it could be called heavy-handed, but it really doesn't come across that way. It is important to know this, as we are introduced over the course of the film, in flashbacks, to a previous life in which Bruce's character was an honored, decorated Secret Service agent who once took a bullet for the President. His current subsistence as a sleazy PI is a far fall for this once great man, a man who still, though apparently lacking pride, shows his strong adherence to his principles when...

Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. This is one of Bruce's defining characters, and I could probably talk about him all day. I should finish setting up the film, though. Damon Wayans' character is an ex-football star who was suspended from the league for gambling and suspicion of drug use. This may sound strange considering all the crap football players get away with these days, but let's allow suspension of disbelief to whisk us away to a magical fairyland where athletes, though sometimes crude and ill-mannered, are nevertheless paragons of virtue when it comes to illegal gaming and substance abuse. Anyway, Damon's character is dating a stripper who is blackmailing the LA Stallions' owner and a US Senator who are conspiring to legalize sports gambling; she is killed for her troubles. Whew! That's a lot of information for one sentence but it's spaced out a little more sanely in the movie.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this movie that keep you hopping, if not guessing. There is also at least one over-the-top character that is reminiscent, though more subdued, of the kooky couple of bad guys in the truly awful movie Hudson Hawk. He is not allowed to run away with either the plot or the tone of the movie, so it works here where it sent Hawk over the edge from "bad" movie to "terrible" movie.

Also, though on the face of it this is a serious action movie, it has a lighter side which pokes fun at the action-movie genre and that particular sub-class of the genre consisting mainly of Arnold Schwarzenegger films in which the hero makes inane quips whenever he blows away a gad guy. This really comes to the front at the end of the movie, when Bruce and Damon openly discuss the action hero of the 1990's, but it's present throughout the film in more subtle ways. At one point, Bruce is held at gunpoint by two men. He is sitting in a chair and has just woken up after being waylaid by these guys. He calmly asks for a cigarette, then for a light. One of his captors holds out a lit Zippo, then punches Bruce in the side of the face when he leans forward to light his cigarette. Bruce sits back up, asks for a light again, and says very seriously, "Touch me again and I'll kill you." He leans forward for the light and gets punched in the face again. He sits back up, then lightning-quick, strikes the man's nose with the heel of his palm, driving the cartilage or whatever is in the nose up into this guy's brain, killing him. He then sits down and lights his cigarette, saying only, "I told you."

That's the kind of scene I go to a Bruce Willis movie to see. If I let myself, I'll discuss the entire plot at length and ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it. Before I spoil more of the movie, let me just say in conclusion that this is classic Bruce Willis, a must-see for any fan of Bruce, or of the action genre in general. My friend Mike, another huge Bruce fan, puts this movie at Number 1 on his top ten list. I haven't compiled mine yet, but I'm sure this would be right up there. Check it out if you get the chance!