YMMV / The Last Boy Scout

• Awesome Music: "Friday Night's a Great Night for Football", the title theme by Bill Medley that's designed to sound like the opening music for an NFL television broadcast, complete with the opening credits being presented in a manner straight out of one from the late '80s or early '90s.
• Complete Monster (Shane Black's original screenplay): Milo is significantly nastier than he is in the final product, even managing to eclipse his boss Sheldon Marcone. A director of snuff films on top of being a psychopathic hitman for Marcone, Milo routinely has young women tricked or kidnapped to be brutally murdered by his henchmen for the purpose of his films. Once Marcone orders the assassination of Senator Calvin Baynard, Milo kidnaps the hero Joe Hallenbeck and his wife Sarah and threatens to use Sarah as the next star in his snuff films if Joe doesn't kill Baynard, with full intent of simply burning Joe to death and using him to soak up guilt as he and Marcone walk off free. Along the way, Milo massacres an innocent family simply because they inconvenience him and, after murdering Baynard and all of his men before being defeated and scarred by Joe, murders his way back to Joe and tries to furiously gun down him and his entire family in revenge.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Big Bad's goal is to bribe enough senators to allow for legalized gambling in football. In May 2018, the US Supreme Court struck down a federal law that bars gambling on football, basketball, baseball, and other sports in most states, giving states the go-ahead to legalize betting on sports.
• He Really Can Act: Taylor Negron mostly stuck to comedic roles, so it's a shock to see him playing Milo, and even more of a shock to pull it off brilliantly and terrifyingly.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This quote from Halle Berry's character:
    Cory: If I were a cat, I'd purrrrrr.
  • Joe says that all the makeup his daughter wears makes her "look like a goddamn raccoon". Fast-forward to 2006 and in the animated film Over the Hedge, Bruce Willis actually provided the voice for a raccoon.
  • Darian watching Lethal Weapon on TV. Not only was the script by Shane Black, Damon Wayans later starred as Roger Murtaugh in the 2016 reboot series.
• Love to Hate: Milo. Taylor Negron's performance is simultaneously terrifying and loathsome, making him a credible threat against Hallenbeck while also being despicable enough that the audience wants him to get his comeuppance.
• One-Scene Wonder: Badja Djola as an Affably Evil thug.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Prior to this film, Halle Berry's biggest claim to fame was as the love interest in a low-budget black romantic comedy called Strictly Business. Her star would start to rise in her next movie, the Eddie Murphy comedy Boomerang.
  • Also in the movie is Billy Blanks before he gave us the wonder of Tae-Bo.
  • And a very young Kim Coates, nearly thirty years pre-Sons of Anarchy, gets his nose punched in by Bruce Willis' character.
  • Eddie Griffin as the strip club DJ.
  • One of the dancers at the strip club was played by Sara Suzanne Brown, in her film debut. She would later become famous to B-movie fans for appearing in various erotic "Skinemax" flicks during the first half of The '90s.
• Signature Scene: The opening scene, with Billy Cole shooting three opposing players while en route to the end zone, just before offing himself.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Jimmy's backstory, and his monologue about it to Joe.
  Jimmy: Alex was my son. I used to be married. One Sunday away in Miami, my wife couldn't come because she was eight months pregnant. She was walking down La Brea boulevard. Out of nowhere a pickup truck jumped the curb. POW! She never knew what hit her. She died, but Alex lived in a incubator for seventeen minutes, just enough time for one dream. Then he died. I think about him all the time. I threw for three hundred yards that day while my wife and kid were dying, I played the game of my life. Life sucks.
  • Jimmy crying over photos of Cory and ruefully blaming himself for her death.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Likely the reason the film underperformed. The two leads (Joe and Jimmy) are an abusive, cynical drunk and a drug-addicted, hedonistic has-been respectively who are genuinely unpleasant people who are (reluctantly) fighting to stop a Corrupt Politician from being assassinated. The only reason they're worth rooting for is because the villains are so much worse, and the rest of the cast are equally abhorrent. Add on a bleak, nihilistic tone and graphic violence, and the film becomes genuinely hard to watch at times.
• Vindicated by History: At the time of its release, it received mixed reviews, and while it didn't flop, it wasn't a blockbuster either. Now, it's considered a quintessential Bruce Willis action thriller on par with Die Hard.

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