Bruce Willis

The Last Boy Scout

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  • Title: The Last Boy Scout
  • IMDb: link

“You’re trying the save the life of the man who ruined your career, and avenge the death of the guy that fucked your wife.”

1991’s The Last Boy Scout is the kind of odd couple action story screenwriter Shane Black has explored over his long career before perfecting it in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. The film stars Bruce Willis as down on  his luck private investigator Joe Hallenbec who gets roped into a case by a colleague (Bruce McGill) secretly screwing his wife (Chelsea Field) that involves a dead stripper (Halle Berry), a washed-up NFL quarterback (Damon Wayans), and a greedy NFL owner (Noble Willingham).

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The Jackal

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  • Title: The Jackal
  • IMDb: link

The Jackal

Sometimes movies just don’t quite work. Wayback Wednesday takes us back to a film that fits that category. 1997’s adaptation of The Day of the Jackal has a talented cast in Bruce Willis as the infamous assassin, Richard Gere as an IRA terrorist let out of prison to help hunt him down alongside Sidney Poitier and Diane Venora, and smaller roles from the likes of Mathilda May, J.K. Simmons, Jack Black all of which helped propel the film to box office success. But despite that talent on-screen, the story of hunting down the world’s greatest assassin just can’t hit the bullseye.

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Motherless Brooklyn

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  • Title: Motherless Brooklyn
  • IMDb: link

Motherless Brooklyn movie reviewWith Motherless Brooklyn, Edward Norton stars, directs, and adapted the novel of the same name. It’s in his choices, and likely his performance, where you will decide what you think of the film. Moving the events back in time allows the story to be reframed as a noir fitting our detective’s narration and the style of a gumshoe tale.

Motherless Brooklyn is shown from the perspective of private detective Lionel Essrog (Norton). Despite being burdened with tics he cannot control, Lionel is the star of Frank Minna’s (Bruce Willis) P.I. business (and car service). But when something goes wrong on a case it falls to Lionel to step-up and unravel a web of criminal conspiracy and murder.

If you can accept Norton’s showcasing Lionel’s tics the film will likely work for you, as it did for me. The character is fascinating and we do see how his nature helps him in other aspects of his job, while admittedly leading to some problems dealing with people. Norton builds on his performance and the strengths of a novel to create a smart and entertaining film (even if it isn’t quite as clever as it thinks it is).

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The Great Films – Unbreakable

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  • Title: Unbreakable
  • IMDb: link

“They say this one has a surprise ending.”

Unbreakable movie reviewToday’s Throwback Thursday post takes us back to one of my favorite super-hero movies. Overshadowed by writer/director M. Night Shyamalan‘s far more commercially successful first film and his subsequent slide into mediocrity, Unbreakable stands alone as the one film from his catalog that gets better with each subsequent viewing. A perfect origin story, Unbreakable is a super-hero film without any of the trappings of super-hero films. A low-key, slow-paced drama, the story slowly unfolds while staying true to the basic truths of comic book storytelling. If there’s an anti-Batman and Robin, it’s Unbreakable.

The film has everything going for it including a writer who understood his subject manner, stars perfectly cast as real-life comic book characters, a terrific humor, and some of the best shot scenes of any film from this decade by Eduardo Serra whose framing choices help mold and develop each character climaxing in the traditional birth of a hero that remains grounded in reality more than any super-hero movie before or since. It’s a perfect storm that results in an amazing film that holds up as well today as when it was released more than 18 years ago.

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Breakable

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  • Title: Glass
  • IMDb: link

Glass movie reviewGlass is an unusual sequel to a pair of movies made 16 years apart which are, at best, only loosely connected by a single scene. The film unites the main character from 2016’s Split with the primary characters from 2000’s Unbreakable, throwing the unlikely trio together to be examined by a psychiatrist (Sarah Paulson) specializing in a growing mental disorder of people believing themselves to be super-heroes.

If you’ve seen either of the previous two M. Night Shyamalan films you know that David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) are indeed super-human while Elijah “Mr. Glass” Price (Samuel L. Jackson) fits the bill of the genius super-villain to stir the drink of this unusual cocktail.

Knowing Dr. Staple’s (Paulson) premise is faulty makes it hard to legitimize her point of view, but it does create tension waiting for the truth to be revealed. While messy in spots, and rather slow to get started, Glass is never boring. As expected, the film features a few Shyamalan twists as it delivers a suitable sequel to Split, even if it doesn’t reach anywhere near the heights of Unbreakable.

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