Los Angeles. Detective Joe sets out to find the killers of his business partner Mike, and thus follows Mike’s trail of a stripper Cory who has a tape recording of sports millionaire Macrone who bribed Senator Baynard into legalizing sports gambling. When Cory is shot, her boyfriend Jimmy teams up with Joe. Macrone’s henchmen intend to assassinate Baynard at a football game and put the blame on Joe, but luckily Joe and Jimmy are able to stop it. Macrone takes a briefcase thinking it is full of money, but Jimmy switched it with a briefcase with a bomb inside, and thus the villain explodes when he opens it at his home.
The director Tony Scott often spent too much emphasis on the aesthetic of cinematic images than on the sole story, characters or style in his movies, but “The Last Boy Scout” is one of his three movies where he managed to rise to the occasion and deliver something more than technicalities (the other two being “True Romance” and “Enemy of the State”). It’s a pity that “The Last Boy Scout” is among one of those neglected movies that were forgotten despite being unexpectedly good, since it is actually one of the best “Die Hard” rip-offs, featuring a role that perfectly fits Bruce Willis. The screenplay by Shane Black is at times simply clever and is able to set up events fluently, so that every sequence leads to the next one with a natural transition. The opening act establishes the sloppy hero Joe, a Detective, as he listens to his business partner Mike over on the phone, who is bragging about meeting an attractive stripper, Cory: “She’s hot, Joe. She rates a three on my finger scale. That means I would cut three of my fingers if God would let me shagg her.”
All of this plays a role later on, and isn’t just a throw-away comic line. When Joe goes to his estranged wife’s home, he suspects she is having an affair and hiding her lover in the closet. She initially denies it, and tries to frame it as if Joe is crazy, but Joe just pulls out his gun, aims it at the closet, and says he is going to shoot it by the count to three, since nobody is in there, anyway. The closet doors open—and reveal the man hiding inside is Mike. Willis and Damon Wayans (who plays Jimmy) don’t have that much genuine chemistry for a buddy cop flick, yet the script always gives them consistently good situations to be in or that say a lot about their personalities. Danielle Harris has a nice supporting role as Joe’s 13-year old daughter Darian, who has a genius sequence in which she saves him: pretending she doesn’t know him, Darian inisists that Joe, who is held hostage by the villains, should take her beaver hand-puppet, and once he puts it on, he realizes why—the puppet has a gun hidden inside it. The main plot revolving around corruption and sports gambling isn't that important as much as creating plot points to give Joe and Jimmy something to work together against the main bad guy. Maybe the movie didn't do so well because its title isn't that catchy, yet it compensates this thanks to a lot of inspiration and spirit.
Grade:+++
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