Review #1,298: 'The Last Boy Scout' (1991)

Tony Scott's The Last Boy Scout arrived at a time when the macho action thrillers popularised in the 1980's were starting to die out. This, combined with its odd Christmas-time release, meant that the film would go on to underwhelm at the box-office, although it would prove a hit in the rental market and reignite Bruce Willis' action career after the failure of Hudson Hawk. It also took a beating from critics, many voicing their displeasure at the foul-mouthed dialogue and particularly brutal violence. It's a shame really, as looking back, The Last Boy Scout really represents the pinnacle of this overly masculine sub-genre, even though it arrived at a time when audiences were growing tired with it.  Yes, it's preposterous, crude and slightly misogynistic, but it's also funny, clever and features screenwriter Shane Black at his most quotable best.

The movie begins with making a mockery of American Football's televised musical intros, before diving right into the thick of the action on a particularly dark and rainy night. Running back Billy Cole (Tae Bo guru Billy Blanks) is having a great night on the field before outside pressures and a hit of PCP lead him to shoot up half of the opposition before turning the gun on himself. Deadbeat private investigator Joe Hallenback (Bruce Willis) is acting as a bodyguard for young stripper Cory (Halle Berry), whilst dealing with his own marital problems in a cheating wife and brat daughter. When Cory is killed, her boyfriend - disgraced former quarterback Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans) - finds himself reluctantly buddying up with Joe to slowly unravel a conspiracy that may expose corruption on a massive scale, and offer an explanation for Billy Cole's mysterious suicide. Their snooping isn't appreciated however, and they soon find themselves the target of a criminal gang desperate to cover their tracks and see their plan through to the end.

The Last Boy Scout was famously dogged by production problems, where producer Joel Silver was often cited as the cause of it all. Silver and Willis allegedly took over production, forcing Scott to film scenes he didn't approve of and altering Black's script so much that the finally story barely resembled his original idea. Scott would take revenge in his next film True Romance, where the role of a controlling, cocaine-fuelled producer was modelled on Silver. On top of everything else, Willis and Wayans hated each other. Impressively, these troubles somehow can't be seen in the final product. The chemistry between the two leads is one of the movie's strongest suits, and the plot unravels coherently with more car chases and shoot-outs than you could ever hope for. Scott shoots the film with a glossy commercial aesthetic that works well in the context of the tacky world the film is looking to expose. But the real winner here was Black, who pocketed a cool $1.75 million for his efforts after suffering a setback in his personal life. Despite the changes, this still has the writer's fingerprints all over it, even eclipsing what is undoubtedly his most popular work, Lethal Weapon. They just don't make 'em like this anymore.


Directed by: Tony Scott
Starring: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Chelsea Field, Noble Willingham, Taylor Negron, Danielle Harris, Halle Berry
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,285: 'Kingsman: The Golden Circle' (2017)

Having directed no fewer than three comic-book adaptations with Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and Kingsman: The Secret Service, it's a wonder director Matthew Vaughn has taken so long to deliver a sequel. Kingsman took over 400 million at the box-office and was one of the surprise successes of 2014, and with critical and audience responses both overwhelmingly positive for the My Fair Lady-meets-James Bond spy comedy, a sequel was always going to be on the cards. With The Golden Circle, Vaughn and returning screenwriter Jane Goldman have taken the route of most sequels and made everything bigger, but not necessarily better. The Golden Circle may please some fans of the original with its lashings of ultra-violence and colourful language, but I suspect many will become sickly with the film's desire to throw everything at the screen to see what sticks.

A year on from preventing Samuel L. Jackson's plan to wipe out the majority of the world's population using mania-inducing SIM cards, and Eggsy (Taron Egerton) has settled well within the ranks of the Kingsman and has shacked up with Princess Tilde of Sweden (Hanna Alstrom). One night he is attacked by a former foe he had long thought dead: Charlie Hesketh (Edward Holcroft), the failed Kingsman applicant believed to have perished in the head-exploding finale of the previous film. Charlie is alive and well, and has been fitted with a hi-tech bionic arm capable of brute strength. Eggsy manages to overcome Charlie, but the severed arm hacks its way into the Kingsman's computer system. Soon enough, the majority of Britain's finest secret service has been taken out by long-range missiles. Along with Merlin (Mark Strong), Eggsy travels to the U.S. to investigate a clue left in the agency's Doomsday protocol, and discover a sister agency named the Statesman led by the gruff Champagne (Jeff Daniels).

The Statesman are like the Kingsman, only instead of bespoke suits and good table manners, they dress like cowboys and have nicknames based on alcoholic beverages. Channing Tatum's Tequila is first to greet them, and is understandably suspicious of this shadowy agency operating without their knowledge. There's also Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), and Merlin-equivalent tech genius Ginger Ale (Halle Berry). The bad guy this time around is Poppy (Julianne Moore), a Martha Stewart-like drug baron hiding out in Cambodia. Her master plan is to infect all users of her various drugs with a toxin that will soon cause their deaths unless the U.S. President puts an end to the War on Drugs. Poppy's outlandish plan, which would seem to damage Poppy's trade if successful or offer the President a chance to rid the world of drug abusers and Poppy's customers, is one of many problems with The Golden Circle. Armed with robot dogs and a kidnapped Elton John in an appearance that goes way beyond mere cameo, Vaughn and Goldman seem happy to suck out all sense of reality for this sequel, and with it have considerably lowered the stakes.

The movie's most glaring problem, however, is the return of Colin Firth's Harry Hart. Most of us were shocked and saddened when he received a bullet to the face from Samuel L. Jackson following the original's most spectacular scene, but to bring him back feels cheap, removing any sense of peril in the process. The action scenes, which involve everything from an electric whip to a man-chomping meat-grinder, rely heavily on CGI. The Secret Service did this too, but it also used practical effects to retain a sense of physicality when Harry was hacking, shooting and burning his way through a Church full of bigoted psychopaths. The newcomers all do well despite being left in the background for the majority of the running-time, with Tatum especially barely registering before he is placed into a coma. Highlights include Egerton's beautiful jaw-line and Strong's deadpan Merlin, but there is little resembling the freshness of the first film, which also managed to keep its outrageous ambitions in check by structuring the plot around Eggsy's Kingsman training. The Golden Circle is by no means the disaster many critics have cited, but by striding to take things to the next level, Vaughn has made Kingsman both cringe-inducingly silly and plain boring.


Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Mark Strong, Pedro Pascal, Halle Berry, Elton John, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges
Country: UK/USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #746: 'X-Men: The Last Stand' (2006)

Back in 2006, it seemed like Brett Ratner's third instalment of the X-Men saga was a textbook way to kill a lucrative franchise. The Last Stand kept the satirical undertones of the previous two, and even introduced some new, interesting ones. It also had the biggest set-pieces yet, climaxing in a mutant brawl on Alcatraz that pits the saga's big bad Magneto (Ian McKellen) and his army of cronies against an earnest and inexperienced X-Men led by Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Storm (Halle Berry). However, gone was the love injected into the franchise by Bryan Singer, and gone was any form of coherency and care. But it seems that The Last Stand was not the franchise-killer many envisioned, and, now that Days of Future Past (2014) has apparently eradicated it from the time-line, it is little but a dark blip in an overall successful series of movies.

Horrified by the announcement of a new mutant 'cure', developed from a power-draining mutant child named Jimmy (Cameron Bright), Magneto reforms his Brotherhood of Mutants and sets out kill the boy. Sensing trouble brewing, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) enlists the help of former student and current Secretary of Mutant Affairs for the U.S. Cabinet Dr. Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer), also known as Beast. After disappearing at the end of the previous film, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) resurfaces but re-born as the Phoenix, a mutant fuelled by rage and unbelievable power. When Xavier fails to subdue her mind, Jean allies herself with Magneto, whose army is growing steadily stronger.

The X-Men movies have always succeeded in channelling larger issues such as segregation and racism through the eternal battle between mutants and humans, and if The Last Stand is successful at anything at all, it's in bringing to mind the many differences people are born with, and how these 'afflictions' damage their ability to fit into regular society. Naturally, the issue will divide those affected into those who have fully accepted and embrace how they were born, and those who are eager to slot nicely into the mainstream. The cure offered in the movie also comes with a choice. Magneto sees this as an affront to mutants, who he feels are the next natural step in evolution. Yet Rogue (Anna Paquin), cursed with being unable to come into human contact with anyone, sees it as a way to finally end her pain.

But this is not enough to save The Last Stand from being a complete mess. The two previous movies managed to keep enough of a hold on it's massive ensemble to still tell a decent story. The Last Stand introduces a ridiculous amount of new mutants, from the impressive but little-seen Angel (Ben Foster), whose screen-time betrays his position on the poster, to the ridiculous abomination that is Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones), a wafer-thin villain whose induces cringing every time he opens his mouth. The plot is little more than a way to get the goodies fighting the baddies, and lazy plot-holes and inexplicable tactics on both sides riddle what is an incredibly dull and simplistic climax.

The development of Jean Grey into Phoenix, one of the key X-Men plot threads beloved to fans, admittedly allows for the odd visually spectacular set-piece, but on the whole is a massive let-down. Janssen is perfectly fine in the role, convincing as a seductive yet extremely dangerous mutant capable of God-like powers, but is seriously underwritten. And it's this aspect that really sums up The Last Stand - careless, scattershot, and insulting to its loyal fans. It seems to care far more about how much money the movie can put into it's wallet than creating anything of artistic merit. As said before, the film is such a mess that Bryan Singer had to find a way to quite rightly delete it from the X-Men timeline, and that sums up this pap better than I could ever dream of.


Directed by: Brett Ratner
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Anna Paquin
Country: Canada/USA/UK

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #744: 'X2' (2003)

Seemingly using the first film to practice big-budget movie-making, Bryan Singer followed the mediocre X-Men (2000) with X2 (one of many dodgy titles attributed to the film), a balls-out, mutant mash-up full of genuine characters focus, an intriguing storyline, and set-pieces worthy of the money it earned. In fact, the opening scene, which depicts newcomer Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), a mutant with a forked tail and the ability to teleport, attack a small army of helpless government agents to get through to the President, blows anything the first film had to offer right out of the water.

With mutant antagonist Magneto (Ian McKellen) imprisoned in a plastic cell, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) is focusing his time on helping the maturing students at his school for gifted youngsters. He has sent Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to Alkali Lake, in the hope of helping him discover more about his past, but he finds nothing but an abandoned military base. After the attack on the President, government operative William Stryker (Brian Cox) leads an attack on the unsuspecting Xavier's school, capturing Xavier and Cyclops (James Marsden) in order to strengthen his mysterious plans.

The plot summary is as compressed as can be, as, like the first film, X2 has a lot of big personalities with big, special powers with their own individual stories to tell to cram into a two-hour film. Although there are mutants with far more interesting powers and greater physical potential, the focus remains on the fan-favourite Wolverine. It's Jackman's enigmatic performance that makes him so easily likeable, and he is finally allowed to roam free here. There are no soft fights where nobody dies as in X-Men; Wolverine massacres many of Stryker's men during the attack on the school. When he first drives his claws into an agent who makes the mistake of firing on him, it is the first of many air-punching moments throughout the film.

It's hard to fathom a threat that could actually make a dent in a race of people with such unbelievable powers, so Stryker, a man with no liking for mutants but a fascination with harnessing their powers, has found a way to subdue them. Seeing a mutant like Magneto so helpless is oddly affecting, so, after his spectacular prison break-out, he becomes a sort of anti-hero, doing the kind of dirty work Xavier would not lower himself to. But ultimately, it's the Xavier-Magneto good vs. evil fight that remains the most fascinating, and even with Stryker playing the main villain, Magneto is far from forgotten and has plans to bend Stryker's actions to his own personal gain.

It's a shame then that X2 marks the high-point of the series. There is now a remarkable 7 instalments set in the X-universe, and although X-Men: First Class (2011) injected some life back in the series, and hopes are high for the new X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), none have come close to the kind of energy and invention of this. Though you could complain about the lack of a coherent narrative, and that some of the minor characters are left out to dry, X2 is a near-perfect superhero movie, and is still Marvel's greatest achievement. And with almost 15 years of men in tights and capes, that is high praise indeed.


Directed by: Bryan Singer
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Brian Cox, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romijn, Alan Cumming
Country: Canada/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #743: 'X-Men' (2000)

It's hard to believe that back in 2000, Marvel's first crack at creating a superhero universe on the big screen, X-Men, was a near perfect summer movie. 14 years on, and the cracks are as clear as day in Bryan Singer's hesitant and rather tame blockbuster. Don't get me wrong, X-Men still has plenty to enjoy, but the meatier, more confident recent efforts such as Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and Marvel's own Iron Man (2008) and Thor (2011), as well as the vastly superior sequel two years later, form a rather large shadow over Professor X and his pupils' first outing.

In the near future, evolution has taken a huge leap forward, creating 'mutants' - humans with special powers and abilities that defy anything science has seen before. Tensions between humans and mutants is at an all-time high, with the idea of mutant cataloguing being passed around by Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison), despite the efforts of telepaths Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). Mutant Magneto (Ian McKellen), a Holocaust survivor with the ability to control anything magnetic, has different ideas, and plans to induce mutation on world leaders gathering on Ellis Island.

As the machine, powered by magnetics, could easily kill him, Magneto seeks Rogue (Anna Paquin), a young girl with the ability to temporarily steal a mutant's power. Having just met Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a beast of a man with a skeleton covered in an indestructible metal, which he can shoot out like claws, and an uncanny healing ability, Rogue's abduction fails and is foiled by Storm (Halle Berry) and Cyclops (James Marsden). They end up in Professor Xavier's school for gifted children, where Wolverine learns about mutant struggle and falls in love with the powerful Jean Grey.

With a film this packed with personalities and powers, it's only natural that it loses it's grip on a lot of its characters. Sensibly, the main focus is on Wolverine, who has always been the most interesting X-Man, and is perfectly played by Jackman, a performance that made him a huge star. The rest of the characters, with the exception of Professor X and Magneto, do little but fall flat. They either suffer because their powers aren't particularly interesting, or spend the duration of the film using what little dialogue they have to explain who they are and what they can do. The movie also has one of the worst lines in cinema history, uttered by Storm. You'll know it when you hear it.

For all its lack of ambition and absence of any real set-pieces, X-Men is still the first of its kind. Refusing to give in to the idea of comic books being light, colourful and mainly for kids (which was still the general idea back in 2000), the opening scene depicting a young Magneto in a concentration camp ensures this is something that should be taken seriously, yet still enjoyed. Singer grew in confidence and made X2 two years later, which is still considered by myself and many others to be one of the best superhero movies ever made. X2 showed that the vast ensemble can be given room to breathe, and had the set-pieces to match, and in hindsight, makes X-Men a much tamer, yet still very entertaining, animal.


Directed by: Bryan Singer
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Bruce Davison, Rebecca Romijn
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie