Tagarchief: Tony Scott

Dungeon Classics #39: True Romance

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

True Romance (1993, USA, France)

Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper
Running Time: 119 mins.

In the early nineties, Tarantino wrote a couple of screenplays, including True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. He chose Reservoir Dogs for his directorial debut and was willing to sell True Romance. In 1993, after his debut was released, he took a date to the perfect date movie: True Romance, the film he had written. And boy, did it turn out to be a good movie; great fucking movie. Just looking at the cast members rolling by in the opening credits is astonishing; seeing so many (future) stars in one ensemble cast is rare. Director Tony Scott couldn’t deal with the screenplay’s non-chronological structure, so he changed it to a linear one. But aside from that, it’s a real Tarantino movie: the sharp dialogue, the great characters, the humor, the sudden bursts of violence; it’s all there. And then there’s an amazing sequence, one of the best he ever wrote: the famous Sicilian scene with Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken. Oh man, that is legendary. Also memorable is the brutal confrontation between Alabama and the sadistic Virgil, played by James Gandolfini. The whole movie is basically a rollercoaster in which the two main characters – Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette) – fall in love, get married, kill Alabama’s pimp, take off with his coke, and head to Hollywood to sell it, stumbling into one crazy situation after another while always keeping the film’s romantic core intact. True Romance is Scott’s best film and by far the best Tarantino movie not directed by Tarantino. In other words: it’s a must-see.

Beverly Hills Cop Revisited

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

On July 1, Netflix released Beverly Hills Cop: Alex F, exactly 30 years after Beverly Hills Cop III was released. To celebrate, FilmDungeon checked out the original trilogy which was an enjoyable trip down memory lane.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984, Martin Brest)

The tune is great, his laugh is a riot, and his inventive tricks to get things done are inspiring. Eddie Murphy stars as the wise-ass Detroit cop who goes to Beverly Hills to investigate the murder of his friend. He quickly makes new friends, including detective Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton) who both return in the new movie! He makes plenty of enemies too because not everybody loves Axel’s freewheeling style. In Beverly Hills everything is done by the book, which clashes with his street smart ways. This is the basic gimmick of the first movie and it works like a charm. Murphy is in top form here, delivering funny wisecracks rapid fire style. The banana in the tailpipe is still hilarious and the traffic light gag that follows it is even better. If the new movie can capture any of this comedy magic, it will be fantastic. Let’s hope so…

Beverly Hills Cop II (1987, Tony Scott)

The second movie sees many of the cast and crew members return. Only directing duties were taken over by Tony Scott who had just delivered Top Gun (produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, who also produced the first two Beverly Hills Cop movies). When his friend Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox) is shot, Foley returns to Beverly Hills to help solve the so-called Alphabet Crimes, a series of expertly carried out robberies. There is a new Chief of Police, and he is the biggest asshole of all time and arguably the film’s greatest villain. Murphy still has all these ‘types’ he can play to get things done, and they are often pretty funny. Only the script is poor, and some jokes didn’t age particularly well. But the dynamics between Foley, Taggert and Rosewood is still great, and Rosewood’s development to gun-toting, Rambo-style hero, is hilarious. These are the best two things about this sequel.

Beverly Hills Cop III (1994, John Landis)

More bad guys, more guns, more violent kills, but less humor. The third film in the series was written by Steven E. de Souza, the screenplay writer of Die Hard and Die Hard 2, and he turned it into Die Hard in an amusement park. Only since many of the action scenes would be too expensive, they turned the action down and made it more about Axel’s investigation taking place in an amusement park. Boring! Worse still, Murphy told new director John Landis that he preferred to play Axel as a more mature character. Bronson Pinchot, who reprises his role of Serge from the first film here, later said Murphy was pretty depressed during the shoot. It shows on the screen: Murphy’s performance comes across as mostly joyless. The film does deliver the series most dangerous villain with Ellis DeWald, played perfectly by Timothy Carhart. Still, overall this third entry was a letdown, so let’s hope Beverly Hills Cop: Alex F rocks the house again, so the series can conclude on a high note after all.

Dungeon Classics #22: The Last Boy Scout

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

The Last Boy Scout (1991, USA)

Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Chelsea Field, Noble Willingham
Running Time: 105 mins.

The Last Boy Scout, which was written by Shane Black who also wrote Lethal Weapon, is an action packed buddy flick. A drunken and cynical L.A. snoop Joe Hallenbeck (Willis) teams up with the charming Jimmy Dix (Wayans), an ex pro football player, to investigate the murder of Dix’ girlfriend (played by Hale Berry). They stumble upon a major conspiracy by a bunch of mean gangsters who are corrupting sports betting in football. It’s a testosterone-fueled spectacle for men who were at the top of their game at that time (Willis, Scott, Black and producer Joel Silver). Apparently they hated working together and also changed the script, which according to Black was much better first (read it here). It still has the trademark coarse dialogue, humor and violence though. Willis and Wayans have a great chemistry (although they hated the collaboration they have said) and the movie has some awesome supporting parts; especially Joe’s foul mouthed daughter Darian Hallenbeck (Danielle Harris) is very memorable. The best reason to watch this is Willis’ delivery of terrific lines such as; ‘so you tripped, slipped on the floor and accidently stuck your dick in my wife?’ There is just no denying it; the guy has considerable talent as a leading man action star. And this is the perfect showcase for this talent. They don’t make ‘m like this anymore.

QT8: The First Eight

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

I was 13 years old when I saw the video Reservoir Dogs at my local video store. There were – for me at the time – not many familiar actors in it. But the cover looked pretty cool with guys in suits with guns. Plus there was a lot of praise on it from critics, so I decided to give it a shot. I had no idea what to expect, but Jesus Christ was it a good movie! Ridiculously great filmmaking. One of the best movies I had seen at that point and to this day still.

It is funny to hear all these actors in the documentary QT8: The First Eight basically relate to the exact same experience. Tim Roth, shown while being carried in the warehouse by Harvey Keitel, remembers talking to Keitel about what they had just shot and saying: “Man, this is going to be a really great movie!” Keitel agreed.

Reservoir Dogs premiered on Cannes in 1992, very prestigious for a debut, and it was a great success. Everybody wanted to meet Quentin there and he became a movie making star overnight. Everybody said: “Can you believe this guy? He can write and direct and it’s sensational stuff.”

For a long time I was jealous of Tarantino. And when I watch this documentary I still am. I mean, wouldn’t it be something to be able to write screenplays like this guy? And this is also a shared emotion by many people interviewed for this doc. Talent like this is rare. Many people, including me, tried to write scripts like him. But to no avail.

His first screenplays – True Romance and Natural Born Killers – he had to sell to pay the rent. True Romance was originally told in non-chronological order Tarantino-style. Oh and the pop culture loving Clarence, basically Quentin’s alter ego – died at the end. Luckily Tony Scott changed that. At least I for one liked the happy ending.

Tarantino wanted to become a director, so he wrote a script that he could do on a low budget: Reservoir Dogs. Harvey Weinstein distributed the film. After that everybody in Hollywood wanted to work with him, but the Weinstein’s got to produce all his movies up until The Hateful Eight. Then the scandal broke out, and Tarantino – who according to Michael Madsen had known about Weinstein’s misconduct for some time (read Tarantino’s confession-story here) – switched to Sony for his ninth movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

And this Weinstein-business is the only major stain on Tarantino’s career. That, and pushing Uma Thurman to do a car stunt in Kill Bill, which went wrong causing permanent physical problems for her. No good, Mr. Quentin. But there is a lot to balance it out. He is described by everyone in the doc as a very nice guy who enjoys life, and appears to be a great friend for his many cronies.

Pulp Fiction, that followed Reservoir Dogs, is one of the masterpieces of the past 50 years. Michael Madsen, for whom the part of Vincent Vega was originally written, was committed to Wyatt Earp at that time. Nightmare! He takes it well, commenting on the extremely successful casting of John Travolta. “It is one of main reasons the movie worked.” Plus Travolta can dance and Madsen – who did a dance scene in Reservoir Dogs – can’t, at least in his own opinion. “They would have had to change the script into that they don’t win the dance contest.”

How do you follow up a masterpiece like Pulp? You don’t. Just make a very good genre film instead starring Pam Grier, queen of the blaxploitation movies Quentin went to see during his childhood. Jackie Brown is a beautiful film about people trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Then he made another genre film with a strong female lead, a mash-up between Hong Kong cinema and a spaghetti western. Kill Bill is an astonishing accomplishment. Bit of trivia: The razor the Bride uses to escape from the coffin in Vol. 2 is the same used by Mr. Blonde in the torture scene in Dogs. Everything is related in the Tarantino universe.

Then he went on to make another feministic movie with powerful girls in it. Death Proof is a clever slasher flick / carploitation movie shot by the maestro himself. With an unforgettable Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike. After that came his war movie effort. Inglourious Basterds is unlike any war film ever done before. It is storytelling at his best. Django Unchained is another historic film and it’s brutal. It might just be a little too funny for a film about slavery. But Tarantino likes to hand out justice to his characters. Hitler gets machine gunned to death in Basterds and in Django, the black hero – after having killed a ton of slavers – rides off into the sunset with his girl, an image you won’t find in many westerns.

The Hateful Eight, the final movie treated in this doc, is in a way Reservoir Dogs redone as western. Everything comes full circle. Even Weinstein’s story. Apparently John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth (played by Kurt Russell) is based on the monstrous Weinstein. He gets a big fat lesson in the film. Tarantino said many times that he wants to quit at ten movies, because otherwise he fears the quality will go down and people will say: ‘This one is not so good, but this guy used to make great movies’. Let’s hope he will break his word and continue to make movies forever. His style and voice are unique and irreplaceable in Hollywood. Whatever happens, currently nine films are in the can. And I will certainly keep enjoying his work till the end of my days and share it with friends. When you absolutely, positively, want to blow away everybody motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.