The Last Boy Scout (Retro)

THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991) R 105 Minutes Director: Tony Scott Writer: Shane Black Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Chelsea Field CAST Bruce Willis...Joe Hallenbeck Damon Wayans...Jimmy Dix Chelsea Field...Sarah Hallenbeck Noble Willingham...Sheldon Marcone Taylor Negron...Milo Danielle Harris...Darian Hallenbeck Billy Blanks...Billy Cole

Friday night's a great night for football
You can feel it in the air like lightning on the edge of the night
You can feel it everywhere, but it's party time in Cleveland tonight
Friday night's a great night for football
Catching as tight ends, ready to do it
—THE LAST BOY SCOUT

The Last Boy Scout opens with Billy Blanks—yes, the Tae Bo guy—playing an NFL running back who's about to have the worst game of his life. He's Billy Cole, strung out on pills and pressure. Blackmailed mid-game, he's told to rush for 150 yards or lose everything—his spot, his fix, his life. He pops a handful, eyes go blank in the locker room, then hits the rainy field running on pure instinct.

Ball's snapped. Pitch-out. He tucks and runs. Defensive back barrels in—Cole pulls a gun from under his jersey, pumps three shots through the guy's helmet. Blood and fiberglass everywhere. Keeps going. Another DB dives—Cole blows out his knee. Pandemonium. Players running, cops sprinting, the goalpost collapsing. Cole crosses the line, drops the ball, turns, smiles, and says, "I'm going to Disneyland..." Puts the gun to his helmet. Bang.

It's brutal and absurd—and we're barely past the kickoff. Football's just another racket—players get chewed up, the dream dies on camera, and nobody stops the broadcast. The NFL wanted nothing to do with this movie, so the teams are the Stallions and the Cats instead of actual franchises. The only time you should see the word "stallion" is on the back of a license plate frame about Italians.

Cut to Joe Hallenbeck, the last boy scout—disgraced ex-Secret Service turned PI, sleeping off a bender in his car under the freeway. Dead squirrel lands on his chest courtesy of neighborhood kids. He wakes, stuffs a .38 in a kid's face ("Hey, motherfucker"), then realizes and lets go. Vomit on the lawn, Camel lit, Seagrams rescued. Jimmy Dix gets his own version: ex-QB, coke spoon in the mirror, flashing back to glory days on the field—seventy thousand screaming, perfect spiral, feeling alive—now this.

From there, it's the same pattern: rigged games, senators taking bribes, painkillers handed out like Tic Tacs so players can grind through the damage. Villains like Milo exude slick, dramatic, prissy menace. The bad guys monologue with campy flair while the heroes trade insults through gunfire. It gets so excessive, the darkness starts feeling ridiculous instead of scary.

Hallenbeck's a mess—marriage wrecked, daughter hates him—but he still operates by some code: protect family, team up with Dix (even if they just insult each other). Dix talks about his wife getting killed during his best game, their kid lived 17 minutes. That lands harder than Dix getting thrown from an overpass. The banter's sharp ("Smile, you fuck"—Hallenbeck to his own reflection). But the two of them keep showing up anyway—protecting family, refusing to quit. In a world this rotten, being the last boy scout isn't naive—it's just what's left.

The Last Boy Scout works. It's unapologetically '90s, made for people who want their action movies bitter and loud. The original script had Joe donate the money to charity—they kept it. That's the whole movie: when everything's broken, the only honest move is to stop pretending otherwise.

Final Verdict: 85 out of 100

A Good Day To Die Hard

A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD
97 Minutes
R
Director: John Moore
Writers: Skip Woods, Roderick Thorp
Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch

Cast
Bruce Willis–John McClane
Jai Courtney–Jack McClane
Sebastian Koch–Komarov
Mary Elizabeth Winstead–Lucy
Yuliya Snigir–Irina

‘Code red, code red.’
-Bruce Willis, THE SIEGE (1998)

(Insert Yaknov Smirnov Joke Here)

Take Your Kid To Work Day: The Movie…To The Extreme

All aboard! The 80s-Action-Movie-Express-Train blew passed the station, and shows no sign of slowing down. It’s about to jump the rails, hit the napalm factory, and plow right into the orphanage, the one adjacent to the factory.

After RAMBO and THE EXPENDABLES films, I’m no longer nostalgic for the action stars of yesteryear. The irony, it’s gone. The next time I see Chuck Norris, it better be in an AARP commercial.

If you were wondering, ‘Die Hard’ is a reference to the battery; it’s not about the erection men get after becoming deceased.

John McClane goes to Moscow to give the Cold War a real ending. He thinks his son, Jack, has P-OD-ED on some top-notch pharmaceuticals. But really, Jack is a CIA spy. And so, there you have it, father and son, fighting Russian gangsters. John worked too much when Jack was growing up. But worry not, they’ll patch things up quickly; you only need a couple of hours to undo 30 years of resentment.

Here’s where it gets interesting… Just kidding, it never gets interesting.

After the first half hour, you lose all hope of seeing a good movie. From there, they don’t even bother giving us one decent scene.

The last DIE HARD had some problems, but it was still watchable. This latest DIE HARD can only be described as a violent, action-packed clusterfuck.

Bruce Willis just memorized a bunch of one-liners. Like, ‘I’m here, where’s my God-Damn paycheck?’

Willis has a serious case of ‘Tim Allen Syndrome’; where he’s gotten a little too comfortable with one particular role, like ‘Santa Claus’, or ‘John McClane’.

DIE HARD is not without positive attributes. What I liked most, the film’s brevity. It isn’t overly long, and that’s not so bad. Also, I love the part where John crashes through the window of an office building, and the other scene where he crashed through a window. That was cool.

Several times, John McClane mentions that he’s on vacation. And I say yes, he most certainly was.

I’m too young for this shit.

Final Verdict: 56 out of 100

Total Recall

TOTAL RECALL
PG-13
118 Minutes
Director: Len Wiseman
Writers: Kurt Wimmer, Mark Bomback, Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon
Jon Povill, Philip K. Dick
Colin Farrell, Bokeem Woodbine, Bryan Cranston

Cast
Colin Farrell ... Douglas Quaid / Hauser
Kate Beckinsale ... Lori Quaid
Jessica Biel ... Melina
Bryan Cranston ... Cohaagen
Bokeem Woodbine ... Harry
Bill Nighy ... Matthias

Joe: Hey, you guys, here's one for you. Let's say none of us were married, all right? If you could have any woman in the world, who would it be?...

Peter: Oh, like you got to ask. The chick with three knockers from TOTAL RECALL. ...

Quagmire: Hey, you know one was papier-mâché, right?

Peter: Oh, jeez, can I change my answer? Of course I know it's paper! I don't care! What's wrong with you?

 -FAMILY GUY--A FISH OUT OF WATER (2001)

I thought this was the day I was finally going to see a good Colin Farrell film. But no, one can dream though, one can dream.

TOTAL RECALL is about the parallel universe in which Al Gore became president in 2000. Just kidding, that idea is far too original to ever see the big screen.

What we have here is a remake. Just because something is redone, doesn't make it bad. I was just watching that last MADAGASCAR movie, it took them three times, and they finally got that right. I know, most impressive, indeed.

The original TOTAL RECALL (1990), was a cinematic masterpiece to behold : Ah-nold at his absolute finest. Alright, that was an exaggeration, not his best work, literally speaking. I'll just call it somewhere between TERMINATOR 2, and JINGLE ALL THE WAY.

Redoing TOTAL RECALL, would be like redoing KINDERGARTEN COP. I can just see it now...Verne Troyer, with prosthetics, would play a convincing kindergartner. The plot: fake DARE officers are selling drugs to kids during recess. Detective John Kimble needs to investigate this before another kid ODs, face down—on the soccer field.

There is no reason to enjoy the latest version of TOTAL RECALL. Sure, there are some entertaining parts, but this film takes far too a somber tone: there's not one single joke, no one even cracks a smile. The CGI is flawless, but technically speaking, so is an autotuned song.

Even in bad movies, it's fun to see another's vision of the future. But can we just let go of the hovercraft thing. I don't think humans are capable of operating a car in three dimensions. Bruce Willis did it in 5TH ELEMENT, but he's the exception, he's always the exception.

If I live long enough, perhaps someone could implant a memory of me enjoying this movie. Because implanting a memory of me not watching it, might mean I accidently stumble upon this movie one day...the destructive pattern would only repeat itself. I don't have to go any further, you've all seen ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004). 

Final Verdict: 45 out of 100