Tony Scott's Good. Bad and Ugly

[Gabriel Girard]

Every week we each pick a good (All around GREAT flick), a Bad (Not really aspiring to greatness but still fun or endearing) and an ugly (trainwreck of a movie).

This is where we want to see your picks... Give us your Good, Bad, and Ugly for slick/hyperkinetic action director Tony Scott.

True Romance FTW!

[Mitchell Hattaway]

Good: Crimson Tide

Bad: Spy Game and The Taking of Pelham 123 (both fall apart in the third act)

Ugly: Top Gun

Now and I sit and wait for Steve to tell me how wrong I am about Spy Game.

[cdouglas]

Ah, I'm ready for this one, as I made a project of going through Scott's entire filmography last year.

Good: Crimson Tide - Though the Tarantino punch-ups are a little distracting, this is a tremendous thriller which deals with some complicated issues in intelligent fashion. Never get tired of revisiting it.

Bad: The Fan - Kind of a train wreck (and it has no idea how - or where - professional baseball games are played), but a rather riveting one. Fun to watch De Niro in deranged Cape Fear mode.

Ugly: Beverly Hills Cop II - Simply painful. I know this series has a lot of fans, but I found the first one mediocre and this one insufferable (still haven't seen the third one from start to finish).

[Attrage]

Good - Man on Fire though every fibre of my being wants to say True Romance or Crimson Tide here...grrrr so hard to pick one.

Bad - Revenge (I am one of the very few people who prefer the original cut to his massacred "director's cut")

Ugly - Top Gun - unlike the "Good" option, it was incredibly easy to only pick one for this category

[Gabriel Girard]

Bad: The Fan - Kind of a train wreck (and it has no idea how - or where - professional baseball games are played), but a rather riveting one. Fun to watch De Niro in deranged Cape Fear mode.

I also chose The Fan as my ugly but, as mentionned in the podcast, I felt that it fell mostly flat and that De Niro was mugging. The fact that it wants us to empathize with his character is a mjor failing. I also felt that Tony wanted to ape Scorsese by using De Niro in a psycho role and by putting The Rolling Stones all over the soundtrack.

[cdouglas]

Bad: The Fan - Kind of a train wreck (and it has no idea how - or where - professional baseball games are played), but a rather riveting one. Fun to watch De Niro in deranged Cape Fear mode.

I also chose The Fan as my ugly but, as mentionned in the podcast, I felt that it fell mostly flat and that De Niro was mugging. The fact that it wants us to empathize with his character is a mjor failing. I also felt that Tony wanted to ape Scorsese by using De Niro in a psycho role and by putting The Rolling Stones all over the soundtrack.

None of it's really defensible, but I'd be lying if I said I had a bad time watching it. I'd rather see it again than one of Scott's more successful but less compelling early efforts like Top Gun or Days of Thunder. And De Niro is mugging, but at least he isn't sleepwalking through the part like he's done in so many recent efforts.

[mavrach]

Good: True Romance - I've always felt this to be a great crime thriller that's both fun and dangerous at the same time. It juggles a lot of characters, many which are only briefly onscreen, even for a single scene, but are still hugely memorable. Brad Pitt's tiny role as Floyd might be the funniest thing he's ever done, and Gary Oldman's performance as Drexl makes me wish he lived through the whole movie. I get Steve's "bleeding cool syndrome," but in while that does apply here, I think it comes off as being genuinely cool. But I've loved just about everything that Tarantino has touched so that's my personal tastes.

I agree that this movie feels very different from the rest of Tony Scott's work. Actualy this officially is in the same canon as the rest of Tarantino's universe. In Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel reminisces about a girl named "Alabama." If I had to pick a "real" Tony Scott flick that would be The Last Boy Scout.

On a personal note, we used the True Romance theme song during our wedding ceremony. It played while we were taking the vows. So yeah I love this one


Bad: Man on Fire - One of Scott's better movies, but it's pace suffers from being overly long, especially during its first act. If it were a little leaner & meaner I think it would've been a great improvement on a movie that's already pretty awesome.

Ugly: I'm having a hard time coming up with a specific Bad for Tony Scott. Going through his filmography, he's got a few that I used to love as a kid then just never watched again after age 15: Days of Thunder, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, Crimson Tide.
Then he as a few that I watched once when they first came out and never bothered returning to: The Fan, Enemy of the State. Spygame actually falls into this category for me, but your raving about it makes me want to retry it. I saw The Hunger a few years ago and didn't care for it. Domino is here too.


And why don't they leave Ethan Suplee aloooone??? Heh, if you want to see him in his true form, check out Evolution when he plays a straight F student who out of nowhere coughs up a perfect source of selenium sulfide.

[Steve T Power]

Good: True Romance - I've always felt this to be a great crime thriller that's both fun and dangerous at the same time. It juggles a lot of characters, many which are only briefly onscreen, even for a single scene, but are still hugely memorable. Brad Pitt's tiny role as Floyd might be the funniest thing he's ever done, and Gary Oldman's performance as Drexl makes me wish he lived through the whole movie. I get Steve's "bleeding cool syndrome," but in while that does apply here, I think it comes off as being genuinely cool. But I've loved just about everything that Tarantino has touched so that's my personal tastes.

I agree that this movie feels very different from the rest of Tony Scott's work. Actualy this officially is in the same canon as the rest of Tarantino's universe. In Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel reminisces about a girl named "Alabama." If I had to pick a "real" Tony Scott flick that would be The Last Boy Scout.

On a personal note, we used the True Romance theme song during our wedding ceremony. It played while we were taking the vows. So yeah I love this one


Bad: Man on Fire - One of Scott's better movies, but it's pace suffers from being overly long, especially during its first act. If it were a little leaner & meaner I think it would've been a great improvement on a movie that's already pretty awesome.

Ugly: I'm having a hard time coming up with a specific Bad for Tony Scott. Going through his filmography, he's got a few that I used to love as a kid then just never watched again after age 15: Days of Thunder, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, Crimson Tide.
Then he as a few that I watched once when they first came out and never bothered returning to: The Fan, Enemy of the State. Spygame actually falls into this category for me, but your raving about it makes me want to retry it. I saw The Hunger a few years ago and didn't care for it. Domino is here too.


And why don't they leave Ethan Suplee aloooone??? Heh, if you want to see him in his true form, check out Evolution when he plays a straight F student who out of nowhere coughs up a perfect source of selenium sulfide.

Mr. Suplee has become our whipping boy... Evolution doesn't help his case

[mavrach]

Oooh, a sailboat!

[Mitchell Hattaway]

Oooh, a sailboat!

Brenda?

[J.M. Vargas]

Hey, the link to the Tony Scott podcast on the Verdict's "Podcasts" section is broken, can't download it. Can you guys fix this?

Also, since the Verdict's podcasts are all lumped together in one section that doesn't separate them by show, any chance a direct link to the podcasts could be added to the first post of each director's listings? This is more for late-comers to "They Came From the North" that are going back through old episodes (which are tougher to spot on the Podcasts section) but also something for new, future podcasts once the link to them disappears from the front page. And no, I'm not on Facebook.

[Gabriel Girard]

Hey, the link to the Tony Scott podcast on the Verdict's "Podcasts" section is broken, can't download it. Can you guys fix this?

Also, since the Verdict's podcasts are all lumped together in one section that doesn't separate them by show, any chance a direct link to the podcasts could be added to the first post of each director's listings? This is more for late-comers to "They Came From the North" that are going back through old episodes (which are tougher to spot on the Podcasts section) but also something for new, future podcasts once the link to them disappears from the front page. And no, I'm not on Facebook.

Good suggestion! I will put a link for our next GBU in the Jury room section and, if i have time, will have the old ones as well. As fo the link for the Tony Scott episode that is out of my hands, maybe you can find it on itunes.

[J.M. Vargas]

Don't have itunes. Guess I'm screwed then.

[Gabriel Girard]

No you're not, managed to find a working link through the TCFTN facebook page. Enjoy! Tony Scott

[J.M. Vargas]

Thanks!

[Steve T Power]

Keep the feedback comin Vargas - I love it!

[J.M. Vargas]

Finally got to listen to this, and it was worth the hoop jumping. It was a great early show for "TCFTN," one that benefits from not being colored by the passing after it was recorded of Scott himself. I've read and seen so many articles re-assessing Tony Scott as a great auteur, which is partly true but also doesn't make "Domino" or "Top Gun" any more or less the gigantic pieces of cinematic dung that they were before he died. My picks (with a few of his flicks unwatched but hey, I've seen enough):

THE GOOD: THE LAST BOY SCOUT An absolute blast from start to finish, an action movie template that has been copied and remade over and over with diminishing returns (except maybe for "The Long Kiss Goodnight," another Shane Black-scripted self-aware 90's action masterpiece). Yes, it's sexist, dumb, loud and choking on its own testosterone. It's also whip-smart, well-acted (Damon Wayans and Bruce Willis have great chemistry together), funny and, despite minor gaffes (Hallenbeck's re-appearing jacket), well-shot and directed with confidence by Ridley Scott's baby brother. Kind-of surprised Taylor Negron didn't break out as the 90's Al Leong but, also in '91, "Nothing But Trouble" probably canceled out Negron's "Boy Scout" goodwill.

THE BAD: TRUE ROMANCE. Jon Mercer's feeling about "True Lies" in the James Cameron podcast (there's little to no story to link together an unending string of really cool set pieces) apply to how I feel about "True Lies," which has all the ingredients (a rogue's gallery of bad-asses in big and small roles, Tarantino script, Tony directing with both style and restrain from his past and future bad habits, etc.) to be one of the greatest crime noir films ever made instead of just a good one. The movie constantly starts and stops to showcase its cool scene (the 'eggplant' scene, the Elvis advice scene, the white Jamaican pimp scene, etc.) but really, the thread linking all of them together is pretty weak.

UGLY: DOMINO. So many choices ("Top Gun," "Days of Thunder," "The Fan," "Enemy of the State," etc.) but "Domino" gets it because, unlike the silver linings of his other movies (Rooker and Duvall in "Thunder," Gene Hackman in "EOTS," DeNiro in "The Fan," etc.), here Scott is down to his overcooked-and-overpowering style (which even Oliver Stone would frown upon as too much) and nothing else. No interesting leads/characters (just 'B' and 'C' actors posing as bad-ass dudes, except for Rourke of course), an uninteresting lead character (God bless Keira Knightley for trying, but "A Dangerous Method" this ain't), a story that makes no sense, etc. "Domino" is the type of movie most critics and cinephiles accuse Tony Scott of making, but it takes one as devoid of anything besides filmmaking knack like this to highlight what few positives something like "Beverly Hills Cop II" or "The Hunger" can muster.