Tony Scott

Revenge (1990)

Revenge (1990)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, March 2019) At first, I was amazed that there was a suspense film from director Tony Scott that I didn’t know about, especially considering that it features not less than Kevin Costner and Madeline Stowe (and Anthony Quinn, and John Leguizamo, and Miguel Ferrer). Then I watched Revenge and understood why the film hasn’t endured—it’s an average, melodramatic romantic thriller, somewhat saved by impeccable cinematography (Scott’s strongest point) but never escaping a plot that hinges on the dumbest of dumb decisions. To wit: it begins in Top Gun land (brother Ridley Scott actually helped with this sequence) as our protagonist is a freshly retired fighter jet pilot who heads over to Mexico to reside at a friend’s estate. That friend (Quinn) turns out to be a drug lord with a temper and a lovely younger wife (Stowe). Showing the kind of bad judgment unique to puffed-up actors doing a vanity project, our protagonist soon begins a relationship with the young woman and everything goes well until the ending where they live happily ever after. No, wait—that was another movie. In this one, the affair goes badly, precipitating a back half entirely devoted to revenge even if, let’s face it, both of them ignored decades of film noir warnings and really asked for it. If I’m not impressed, it’s for a reason: the inevitable attraction, seduction, revelation and punishment, leading to the titular revenge are intensely predictable—even if the melodramatic ending goes beyond what we’d find over-the-top. Some of the film is buoyed slightly by Costner and Stowe’s charm and Scott’s stylistic approach, but it’s otherwise stuck in common elements and lack of distinction. No wonder few people ever mention it today—even in Scott’s filmography, it’s sandwiched between Beverly Hills Cop II and Days of Thunder and the contrast couldn’t be more to Revenge’s disadvantage.

Unstoppable (2010)

Unstoppable (2010)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In theaters, December 2010) Railroad nerds better steel themselves, because Tony Scott’s latest thriller is a feature-length paean to American rolling steel, from lovely shots of moving locomotives to numerous behind-the-scenes explanations of how this stuff actually works.  While it’s true that Unstoppable eventually becomes a competently-executed action thriller, it’s the film’s unusual focus on railroad mechanics that fascinate until the action truly starts.  Loosely adapted from a true story (Search “CSX 8888” for the details), Unstoppable is about a runaway train and what needs to be done in order to bring it to a stop without causing massive damage.  Denzel Washington is as good as usual as a grizzled engineer, Rosario Dawson does well in a role requiring no sex-appeal whatsoever and Chris Pine (stuck with a stock blue-collar character) solidifies his moderate credentials as an action hero.  Meanwhile, Tony Scott deploys but does not indulge in the kind of hyperactive style he’s been using for a decade: his shots of rolling trains can become a bit too frantic to be properly appreciated, but he’s able to keep his worst excesses under control.  Fittingly for its subject matter, the action scenes have the physical heft of colliding metal, the CGI gracefully bowing to physical effects.  Structurally, the narrative is a predictable succession of failed attempts until our heroes step in to save the day: it’s a bit of a bother when some plans are so obviously underdeveloped that we know they’re doomed from the get-go.  The “adapted from real events” presumably doesn’t extend to a few scenes milked for maximum suspense.  Unstoppable is not a particularly refined film, but it delivers on its promise, and the result is a fine replacement for Runaway Train as the film most people will consider to be the definitive railroad movie.

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In theaters, June 2009): Those looking for a New York crime thriller should be pleased by this latest remake: while the film is good enough, it stops short of being anything more. Director Tony Scott keeps his usual hyper-kinetic tendencies under control, only unleashing them during the credit sequence and a few high-speed interludes. The rest of the film is polished and played generally well by John Travolta and an unglamorous Denzel Washington. Most of the hostage drama is dedicated to a sometimes-contrived actor’s duel, at the expense of the hostages’ characterization. It’s engrossing enough until the third act, when our protagonist keeps volunteering back into a situation that is clearly not his to solve; it all leads to a ridiculously blood-thirty conclusion that hasn’t earned its over-the-top drama and actually diminishes the everyman quality of our tainted hero. As for the rest, well, the remake is generally successful at erasing the seventies origins of the previous film: There are financial shenanigans, high-tech gadgets and plenty of references to contemporary New York. With a stronger and more appropriate conclusion, The Taking of Pelham 123 could have made onto the list of genuinely good thrillers. As it is now, it’s a good-enough choice whenever everything else has been seen.

Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)

Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Second viewing, On DVD, August 2007) More action, more comedy, more snazzy visuals! This second helping of Axel Foley has the added bonus of Tony Scott at the helm, some fair action sequences and a number of intriguing visuals (though Scott would more than top himself later on), but the self-awareness of the cast and crew often gets annoying: Eddie Murphy’s fast-talking riffs can deaden the film fast, and the improvised dialogue between the actors has a loose quality that’s perceptibly less interesting than scripted dialogue would be. Though the plot still doesn’t make much sense twenty years later, the rest of the film is good enough to be seen again.