The Last Boy Scout is getting the 4K treatment from Arrow next week, so I got a chance to check it out, which is timely as the NFL season has begun. This and Any Given Sunday are two movies I enjoy revisiting every season because they expose the dark side of the game. Of course, there’s a lot more to love about The Last Boy Scout (like Kim Coates getting his nose punched into his brain by a hungover Bruce Willis), but the football stuff is exceptionally relevant today.
The master plan of the villain in The Last Boy Scout is to blackmail politicians into legalizing sports gambling. When he kills Damon Wayans’s girlfriend and Bruce Willis’s best friend, they team up to get justice. Along the way there is a lot of violence and wise cracks, along with some football (the opening football scene with Billy Blanks is probably the film’s most famous scene along with the Kim Coates moment). It’s one of those great ‘90s movies we just don’t get anymore that I only love more and more as the years pass. The gambling element hits differently today, though.
Throughout the film, people complain about free agency money ruining football because the players became too greedy. We’re so far beyond the implementation of free agency, and pro sports have become so much bigger since then that this is laughably quaint now. But the gambling plot is unfortunately relevant. Damon Wayans’s character was a superstar who got kicked out of the league for gambling (the physical toll of the game is addressed by his drug addiction, as well). This is just insane by today’s standards as players are allowed to make commercials for gambling, and the NFL in general has completely embraced it.
The only thing that the film is naive about is how gambling became implemented. It didn’t take car bombs, dead strippers, political assassinations and blackmail; simple greed and capitalism took care of it. It all happened thanks to Chris Christie and some Jersey fuckwads worried about the future of Atlantic City (so dead strippers probably were still a part of it). Their lawsuit paved the way for the rest of the states to legalize sports gambling, and that’s why something that used to be handled exclusively by the mob is now being advertised to you multiple times a day by Kevin Hart and LeBron James. Turns out gambling is okay when CEOs and governments can reap the benefits.
Knowing all this puts a different spin on The Last Boy Scout. It’s just weird to see so much violence perpetuated for something so legal and commonplace in today’s world.
The football stuff is an interesting aspect of the film, but I keep coming back to it for Willis and Wayans. Despite reports of a troubled production in which Willis demanded changes and didn’t get along with Wayans, The Last Boy Scout came out just fine. Willis and Wayans’s characters don’t like each other for most of the film, so their real-life animosity probably helped their performances. I have a soft spot for ‘90s Wayans shit, but Willis is the main draw for me.
My favorite type of Bruce Willis performance involves self-hatred, hangovers, and smoking, and god damn this movie has that going on. Willis begins the film passed out in his car. Before he drives off, he looks in the mirror and tells himself, “Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You’re going to lose. Smile, you fuck.” Writer Shane Black confirms in a new interview for this release that he was in a dark place when he wrote this, and it shows. Willis is at his most depressed in this role, but he’s still somehow likable. This film showcases that quality he had, primarily in the ‘90s, of playing someone you would probably hate in real life but would root for in a movie. The Last Boy Scout pushes that to its limits early on, but Willis grows on you, thanks to the constant shit-talking he gets to do with Wayans. And having a lot of dickhead goons around to kill helps, too.
So smile, you fucks, and check out this great new release of The Last Boy Scout, and revisit a time when the idea of widespread sports gambling was so abhorrent it was only something an over-the-top villain in ‘90s action movie.
Transfer and Special Features
Arrow always looks great, and if you check out the workprint footage, you’ll get to see how much better the transfer is compared to that untouched footage.
It’s awesome that they got Shane Black for an interview. It's more of a whole career thing, which is great. But he gets into how it all came together.
He talks about being depressed while writing it. That tracks, because Willis’s character is so fucking depressing in this.
Originally he was supposed to save his wife, but Willis didn't want to do that again after Die Hard.
Danielle Harris talks about cussing, braces, and having fun filming with Taylor Negron, which sounds like a great time.
She tells a Tarantino story. He's a noted Last Boy Scout fan and in Once Upon a Time… he was going to have her yell a cut line from this film at Brad Pitt. But she couldn't film the scene because she gave birth the day they were supposed to shoot the scene. The line was, “Take a bath in my ass!” She promises to try to get it on screen at some point.
There's a featurette with a French dude who literally wrote a book about Tony Scott, so I suppose he's a good choice to talk about Scott for half an hour.
There’s an Interview after a marathon screening of Shane Black films at the American Cinematheque from a couple years ago. It’s not focused on this film, but still, any fan will find it interesting for all the talk about his other work and Joel Silver.
There is some newly found workprint footage with deleted and alternate scenes. They make it very clear that this wasn’t some drastically different cut, just some editing for length and content. The big differences happened to the script before shooting began.
It's nice that each moment has the workprint version followed by the theatrical, and there are explanations of the differences before each scene.
It's all very minor, though some of the more violent edits would have been nice. But overall, this footage isn’t some bombshell discovery of a director’s cut or anything.
There's also an audio commentary with a couple critics that I'm not going to listen to.
And the original script is also included. Actually, the first two drafts are there. Look, I love this movie, but I also know it isn’t high art. I am not reading one script, much less two to see what changes they made, but it’s nice that it’s there for bigger fans than me.
Random Thoughts
I’m ashamed to admit I kind of like that “Friday night’s a great night for football” song. And now that the NFL seems willing to play games any day of the week, they could legitimately use this at some point.
I love Tony Scott, but between this and The Fan, it's clear that he never watched professional sports. The football game here and the baseball game in The Fan are inexplicably dark. Even the announcers in this look like they're calling the game while hiding from a slasher in a closet. And no fucking way would the entire audience be allowed to have open umbrellas.
Billy Blanks, you don't have to do this! Trust me, you'll have plenty of money in a few years from the Tae Bo videos.
“I think I fucked a squirrel to death and don't even remember it.”
This is my favorite kind of Bruce Willis performance: hungover and chain smoking.
Weird that Noble Willingham played an NFL team owner in this and Ace Ventura. I guess he does give off dickhead team owner vibes.
There is way too much banter going on with Wayans right after his girlfriend was killed in front of him. They tack on a little moment with him crying a single tear about it, but that doesn't excuse the constant joking around. I guess we all grieve in different ways.
He was cheating on her, though, so he wasn't exactly boyfriend of the year.
In less than 36 hours, Willis is at the scene of two car explosions and a massive shootout. At what point do they just lock him up as a precaution?
“Apparently there are too many bullets in this gun,” is a pretty fucking cool thing to say before shooting someone.
I mainly wanted to check this out just to see Willis punch Kim Coates's nose into his brain in 4K.
It's hilarious that Willis continues to chainsmoke even as he's held captive. The bad guys just keep giving him cigarettes.
Man, it seems like these guys get caught by the bad guys ten times. Lucky for them these bad guys have a “take them somewhere else and let them talk a lot of shit before you kill them” policy.
I don’t think free agency is hurting pro football as much as shootings happening two games in a row. But Taylor Negron getting shredded by a chopper, and Bruce Willis dancing brings the crowd back immediately, so it's fine.