Saturday, June 6, 2015

Delayed Reaction: The Last Boy Scout

The Pitch: It'll be like Lethal Weapon meets Die Hard.

How I Came Into It: 1991 was a good time to have Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans in a movie. Willis is coming off Die Hard. Wayans had In Living Color and a string of notable movie roles. The buddy cop sub-genre was at its peak. I figured this would be very similar to the other movies of its time.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) As I alluded to, if there was ever a time for a Shane Black script with Willis and Wayans as the leads to work, 1991 was it. At first, I was shocked to see them kill off Halle Berry so quickly, then I considered that she wasn't the name then that she is now, so that wasn't intended to be such a big deal. Willis is always great as the constantly irritated cop partnered with a more charismatic partner (a role that Wayans fits into nicely). I forget how good of child star Danielle Harris was.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: Once something can be distilled down to a formula, it loses some of the magic. That definitely happens with the buddy cop movies. On paper, there's nothing that makes this different than, say, Lethal Weapon, but I have much more desire to rewatch Lethal Weapon than this. Willis veers a bit much into disinterest and Wayans is trying to be cooler than he is at his best.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

No comments:

Post a Comment