'The Last Boy Scout' is decent Buddy Flick

The Last Boy Scout (1991)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Danielle Harris, Noble Willingham, Bruce McGill, and Halle Berry
Director: Tony Scott
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Privvate detective Joe Hallenbeck (Willis) and his partner Mike (McGill) are hired to protect a stripper named Cory (Berry). When Mike is murdered in a car-bombing, and Cory is gunned down in the street, Joe teams up with Corey's boyfriend, a former pro-football player named Dix (Wayans) to uncover the reasons behind the killings. What they discover is that there is deep-seated corruption that infests both local politics and professional sports... and that the deaths of Mike and Corey are only the beginning.


"The Last Boy Scout" is a decent action movie with a script that has better dialogue than most, a superb cast, and a nice selection of subplots that humanize our heroes without slowing down the movie. Fans of the principle stars--Willis and Wayans--will enjoy their performances in this movie. General action fans should find it to their liking as well.

Given the love Hollywood has for sequels, I'm a bit surprised that we didn't get "The Last Boy Scout 2". The end of the film seems to beg for one, and it would be a lot easier to pull off than the sequels to "Die Hard".

'Perfect Stranger' should remain unknown

Perfect Stranger (2007)
Starring: Halle Berry, Giovanni Ribisi, and Bruce Willis
Director: James Foley
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

An investigative reporter (Berry) goes undercover at a top ad agency to prove that its face man Harrison Hill (Willis) murdered her best friend. But can the truth be discoverd when the investigation is mired in hidden agendas?


"Perfect Strangers" is a thriller that is completely devoid of tension, partly because the viewer is never convinced that the supposed murderer is all that dangerous and partly because we're not given a reason to like any of the characters enough to care whether they too get poisoned with an overdose of belladonna.

To add insult to injury, the films lazily written--to the point where every character on screen even sounds alike--and it's got one of those annoying, unnessecary twist-endings that in a desperate attempt to breathe some life and excitement into the film only manages to underscore how haphazard and badly executed it is. (I will grant that it's an ending better supported by what has gone before than in other films, but it's still false, hollow and a bit of a cheat. It's made more of a cheat because of the audience-manipulating flashbacks that appear throughout the film; I despise this movie even more for its refusal to play fair with the viewer and provide ligitimate clues so we can "play along" in solving the mystery at its core and instead feeding us distortions.