The Last Boy Scout
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| The Last Boy Scout | |
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 The Last Boy Scout promotional movie poster |
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| Directed by | Tony Scott |
| Produced by | Michael Levy Joel Silver |
| Written by | Shane Black Greg Hicks |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Damon Wayans Chelsea Field Noble Willingham Taylor Negron Danielle Harris |
| Music by | Michael Kamen |
| Cinematography | Ward Russell |
| Editing by | Stuart Baird Mark Goldblatt |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | December 13, 1991 |
| Running time | 105 minutes |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Last Boy Scout is a 1991 action movie starring Bruce Willis as a former Secret Service agent — now working as a private detective — and Damon Wayans as a retired professional football player, who join forces to solve the murder of the football player's girlfriend. The movie was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and Geffen Pictures, and directed by Tony Scott.
Its grim, downbeat tone and punishing violence proved to be a little much for holiday moviegoers at the time of its release in December 1991. It was, however, a modest commercial success, particularly in comparison to star Bruce Willis' previous vehicle, Hudson Hawk.
At the time of its release, The Last Boy Scout joined a select club of films vying for the unofficial record for most number of times the word "fuck" has been used in a film intended for mainstream distribution. The word, either outright or in participle form, was uttered 102 times. The movie was rated R (restricted) by the Motion Picture Association of America and O ("morally offensive") by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting, no doubt due in large part to the unprecedented level of verbal vulgarity (although the film also contains considerable sexual and violent content). Amazingly, this record has been exceeded on multiple occasions since; indeed, the 1997 release Nil By Mouth fits 470 examples of this vulgarity into its 128 minutes.
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[edit] Plot
Bruce Willis stars as Joe Hallenbach, a private detective and retired US Secret Service agent who discovers that his wife is sleeping with his best friend and sometime business partner, Mike (Bruce McGill). The same morning, Mike is killed in a mysterious car explosion after giving Joe an assignment to act as bodyguard for a stripper named Cory (Halle Berry). Joe immediately crosses paths with Cory's over-protective boyfriend, recently retired football star James Alexander "Jimmy" Dix (Damon Wayans). When thugs attack Joe and kill Cory in front of Jimmy Dix's eyes, Jimmy and Joe team up to solve her murder.
The investigation turns out to tie together the professional pasts of both Jimmy and Joe. Jimmy, it turns out, had to retire from professional football after a sports injury led to an addiction to pain-killers, which in turn led to a possibly bogus gambling charge that ended his career. Joe, meanwhile, used to be a respected agent in the Secret Service and even once saved President Jimmy Carter's life, before his career was ended when he punched a protectee in the face, upon discovering that the corrupt Senator Calvin Baynard was physically abusing one of his one-night stands.
Jimmy and Joe soon discover that Cory had proof that Sen. Baynard (Chelcie Ross) is part of a conspiracy to legalize sports gambling, but that the other conspirators have decided to assassinate the senator rather than continue to bribe him. Much of the film follows Jimmy and Joe's attempts to prevent the assassination.
[edit] Trivia
- Shane Black became the first writer to sell a script for $1 million.
- The movie that Joe´s daughter is watching on TV is Lethal Weapon, which was also written by Shane Black.
- In the original script, the entire third act was set on water. Also, Hallenbeck's grudge with senator Baynard was completely different from the movie. In the script, Hallenbeck was working security for the Baynard family when Louis Baynard, President Baynard's son, kills a mother and her child in a drunken car accident. When Hallenbeck refuses to cover for the president's son, they plant half a kilo of crack cocaine in his house. Louis Baynard was also a villain in the script, and in the end both he and his father dies.
- Quentin Tarantino has declared himself a fan of The Last Boy Scout.
- Bill Medley sings "Friday Night Is A Great Night For Football" on the opening and closing credits.
