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Pretty pictures betray brutality. Orchestrated chaos cut to
Hans Zimmer. Bruckheimer bombast. Alumni
include Michael Bay, Dominic Sena, Joel Schumacher – the bastard sons of
Peckinpah writ capitalist. Ridley’s brother was there first – he laid template
in the coke/booze/sex Don Simpson days. Excess, testosterone-infused. ADD editing. Pounding synth score. Carnage
composed, gorgeously shot – angles, lenses, smoke, light.
But what Tony had that Michael missed is conscience. Current climate of superheroes, Mr. Scott still
dealt in antiheroes. Flawed
masculinity (The Last Boy Scout’s
Joe Hallenbeck is John McClane's id, the median between John Wayne and Snake Plissken). He was as
much a chronicler of the contemporary (usually American, supposedly hetero)
male psyche as Scorsese, Schrader, Eastwood, or juniors PT Anderson and James Gray.
Also seldom mentioned with regard to the cinema of Mr. Scott is emotion – rage, ecstasy, grief,
melancholy, regret, desire. Characters in his films love furiously, obsessively
– from the ostensibly redemptive love of Creasy for Pita in Man on
Fire to the fatally fanatic love of Gil for The Game in The Fan (@:45).
I skipped Top Gun (to
this day), but mainlined Beverly Hills Cop II more times than a tadpole should.
The Hunger, too, bit me – Bowie, Bauhaus, New York City when it was New York Fuckin City, Ann Fuckin Magnuson, ‘Little Suzy’ Sarandon (bi alternapunk doc) bumping into ‘Little Willy’ Dafoe at that telephone booth (a decade prior to co-starring in Paul Schrader’s transformative, likewise New York-set Light Sleeper).
The Hunger, too, bit me – Bowie, Bauhaus, New York City when it was New York Fuckin City, Ann Fuckin Magnuson, ‘Little Suzy’ Sarandon (bi alternapunk doc) bumping into ‘Little Willy’ Dafoe at that telephone booth (a decade prior to co-starring in Paul Schrader’s transformative, likewise New York-set Light Sleeper).
The Last Boy Scout and
Enemy of the State had sharp,
subversive scripts (by Shane Black and David Marconi, respectively), and remain
underrated gems. The former – thoughtlessly maligned upon its Christmas '91 release – is
still the last word on The Obsolete Hero (‘D-Fens’ should have seen the film
before going on his rampage in Schumacher’s Falling Down). The latter, flippantly dismissed as ‘empty’ and
‘implausible’ action fodder fourteen years ago, slyly had our besieged heroes
(including Gene Hackman, riffing on his own Harry Caul antihero from Coppola's The Conversation) ultimately playing the U.S. government against itself - and the Mafia (the final shootout sequence between these two agencies as bravura as these things come) - in the name of liberty. Both films had their cake and ate it, too.
The Fan was
uncomfortably accurate, and True Romance – well, it’s been awhile.
Mr. Bay = soulless product. Mr. Scott = deceptively
substantive cinematic powder kegs. Smart. Exuberant. Taken for granted. Not subtle - but then explosions of emotion never are.
No more Tony Scott, no more Tony Scott Movies ©. Alas, the work endures. Burgeons, even. He saw to that.
Rest in chaos, Mr. Scott.
