The Last Boy Scout (1991)
Everyone had counted them out. But they're about to get back in the game.
Thanksgiving - a time to be thankful. What else happens at that time of they year? Big bowls of gravy. What else has big bowls? Football. Football is a team sport, and being on a team is like having a bunch of friends and family. Who else has friends? Buddy cops. Combine it all up - a buddy cop movie that happens to sort of involve football that also unintentionally happens to include Bruce Willis for back-to-back Willis movies. Be prepared for anything, tonight we check out The Last Boyscout.
Alright, so it’s a little bit dated in overall visual quality. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice - most people aren’t watching DVD quality movies from back in ‘91 through streaming services on their big 4K-capable devices. Still, it’s totally a passable watching experience unless you are real stuffy about things - it’s just a bit of that lower res quality as opposed to some of the real old flicks I’ve watched with actual degraded quality and tears and smudges and the likes. Still, it’s as good a time as any to mention it, and perhaps throw out the bit about how some of the language is a bit dated for the modern sensibilities - I’m fine with it, but considering the amount of people who cast worrisome glares at things like The Monster Squad because of it’s language, it’s only fair it gets mentioned here because there’s obviously more who might get offended by it than I would think. It’s also, as one would anticipate by the R rating, not a movie for kids - there’s a brief bit of topless action in there, but between the language and violence, drug references and general interactions despite having a kid in it for the later portion it’s certainly not geared that way.
Following those sort of mature-oriented vibes, you’ll find that even the main characters have it seeded into them. Not much in this world - including the kid character - is a bright, cheerful, totally good and innocent thing. There’s blackmailers, cheaters, drug users, criminals, bribers, murderers, and every shade of grey around them floating about in here. The main character even comes off as a bit “not good” in that sense, feeling a bit like a dead beat or overall just not a nice person to be around. It gives the movie more of an almost noir feel, in that it doesn’t necessarily have any character the shining beacon of good, and you get the impression that you’re just choosing the character who at least is doing “right” things even if they aren’t the best person out there. Funnily enough, this sort of helps emphasize some of the buddy cop moments, as despite both of them being perhaps not great people, when they start joking around with each other and acting the parts it feels surprisingly genuine and brings some levity to a dark-filtered view of the world. It does this job quite well, because otherwise one would expect this movie and it’s outlook to be incredibly depressing, and yet instead here it is being entertaining as it can be.
The plot might not be the most extravagant. The mystery after finally given enough threads plays out as you’d expect - but the movie also doesn’t really try to twist or turn the plot in that manner. It gives you A, fills you in until you see the destination B, and then takes the occasional side path to fill out things for a more action packed end. That being what it is, and even with a foreseeable close, it manages to make the trek fun to go through. You know a baddie when you see them, wonder slightly about a characters backstory, wonder what the good or bad guys will do next - it largely uses that mystery to just spin up the thriller side of it more, adding tensions as opposed to making you actually ask questions or pull out your flow-chart tracking string lines and cork board posters.
Starting it off with a bang.
The actors do a decent job here. Any fault I might try and find with the actors - such as the main’s seeming lack of emotion at times - feels more like it’s all intentional for the characters. At times a character might be over the top some - the loud mouth head of police type, the overly respectful villain, the assaulting scrabble man, the one-liners - but it’s not a guaranteed bad thing. The one liners, for instance, might make some groan but I enjoyed them and that amount of cheese it brings to it. Character interactions are done well, and outside of a few part time filler characters who perhaps come off as irrelevant and easily replaced by any actor in the universe, they actors make for some relatively believable banter. Sometimes, they even happen to have some jokes. Sometimes, the jokes seem built into the movie more as taglines, like the “and then some” that continually keeps coming up. It’s done so often it’s essentially a character trait, so I guess certain aspects of it are hit or miss - but again, that feels less like an actor thing and more like a writing sort of thing.
As I watched the prolonged Friday night Football ad that servers as the opening credits, I also noticed another familiar name - Shane Black. How much he had to do with everything I can’t say, but there is a bit of a resemblance here to other things with that name attached - buddies and language not withstanding. As mentioned before, the jokes themselves are a bit hit or miss - being subjective, it probably always will be for the most part. I got a good chuckle out of some of them, grew tired of others, and passed through even more as just middle-ground entertainment. As is a thing with the old BC flick, differences between the two mains come up and cause a bit of butting heads - and the resulting banter is usually pretty entertaining, especially after it starts to hit it’s stride after things start moving more steady. That’s not to say that the movie has a bad flow - if flows pretty dang quick and doesn’t let up much after the opening. What it is to say is that when the two hit their stride as a team and onward is when the movie is at it’s best.
Action scenes are fun and filled with shootouts and explosions and violence. There’s a decent amount of blood in this one - you won’t really see any super hard things, like limbs coming off or guts falling out - it’s mostly all just blood work. That being what it is, the blood looks fine, and what it’s lacking in that it makes up for in things blowing up. Plenty of explosions float around, as are chase scenes that are normally pretty short and sweet, as well as a full body burn - which is always impressive from the standpoint that someone decided “hey, yeah, light me on fire so we can get a cool shot.” The movie isn’t without suffering some of the cliches however, like the mid-movie breakup followed by the inevitable returning to team - or the ever obvious “oh, character X has a kid aye? Bet they end up in danger somehow.” Beyond that, I’d argue that the world being so depressing is probably the worst thing this movie has going for it - but that does help make the better moments that much more enjoyable, if not slightly confusing at times.
Blue’s Clues has really aged.
While maybe not the best option for throwing on with the family while awaiting the Turkey to finish roasting, it’s a good flick. It plays it’s strong points well, even if in doing so it still falls victim to plenty of cliches. The acting is pretty decent, although not award winning, and the action and jokes come flying out at a rate faster than money for a pair of leather pants. While it might not leave you the most impressed, and those who object to things that make movies R - you know, like violence, language, and a little bit of nudity - probably won’t care for it, a decent amount of others probably would find it a fine use of time. I’ve got to admit though, they probably could have picked a far more suiting name then they did.