By David Weiner
1:32 PM PDT, August 20, 2012
The entertainment industry is feeling the ripple effect of the death of filmmaker Tony Scott, whose contributions to the action genre over the past 25 years put him on the A-list of Hollywood directors. Chances are you've seen more Tony Scott films than you realize, from Top Gun and Days of Thunder to Spy Game, Enemy of the State and his collaborations with Denzel Washington, from Crimson Tide to Man on Fire and Unstoppable. Here's a list of five great, required-viewing Tony Scott films.
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In Memoriam: 5 Essential Tony Scott Movies
Buena Vista
The entertainment industry is feeling the ripple effect of the death of filmmaker Tony Scott, whose contributions to the action genre over the past 25 years put him on the A-list of Hollywood directors. Chances are you've seen more Tony Scott films than you realize, from Top Gun and Days of Thunder to Spy Game, Enemy of the State and his collaborations with Denzel Washington, from Crimson Tide to Man on Fire and Unstoppable. Here's a list of five great, required-viewing Tony Scott films.
The Hunger
MGM
Scott's first feature-length film that pre-dates his calling card as a thinking-man's action director is a highly stylized, subversive take on the vampire genre that changed the rules and demonstrated that both Scott brothers were a filmmaking force to be reckoned with. Very similar to brother Ridley's high-gloss visual style, 1983's The Hunger film stars David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve as vampire lovers who prey on clubgoers (to the tune of Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus) and then wash away their sins in the shower, "Forever and ever." But when Deneuve takes a special interest in sleep/aging researcher Susan Sarandon (complete with a memorable lesbian encounter under the covers), Bowie's inner eternal clock is broken, forcing him to age rapidly – and join the ranks of Deneuve's tormented former lovers in a pine box. The Hunger's elegiac atmosphere is smartly punctuated by the strategic use of Schubert's Trio in E Flat.A stunning debut.
Top Gun
Paramount
Scott's muscular, edge-of-your-seat 1986 film about the best of the best of naval aviators made Tom Cruise a bonafide A-list star and singlehandedly inspired a surge of new recruits. With the practically all-access assistance of the Navy, the film dispatches politics for a cockpit seat-view of the fighter-pilot experience, and spawned a number of pale genre imitators (the Iron Eagle series for one) and a lifetime's worth of quotable moments. Got a need for speed?
Beverly Hills Cop II
Paramount
Eddie Murphy mined box-office gold cracking wise as Axel Foley in the first Beverly Hills Cop movie, and the 1987 sequel upped the action-and-laughs ante with Scott at the helm. Arguably a strange follow-up to Top Gun career-wise, Scott was riding high with Paramount on the box office strength of the Tom Cruise hit and displayed a confident dexterity mixing Murphy's chemistry with his co-stars amid the white-knuckle action and suspense, with Bridgette Nielsen and Jurgen Prochnow as the new villains.
True Romance
Warner Bros.
Scott's ultra-violent, 1993 take on Quentin Tarantino's script marked the two filmmakers' first collaboration and emphasized truth, love and beauty over blood, bullets and vengeance. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette play doomed lovers Clarence and Alabama, whose lives are altered by a perfect first date, a vision of Elvis, a dead pimp and a stolen suitcase of cocaine. The film's highlight is a virtuoso scene of dialogue between bad guy Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper, who portrays Slater's father, in which captor and captive share a friendly chat and Hopper backhandedly insults Walken's Sicilian heritage, set to the famous The Flower Duet from the opera Lakmé, a signature Scott move. The star-studded shoot-'em up features Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Saul Rubinek, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Bronson Pinchot, Michael Rapaport, James Gandolfini and Samuel L. Jackson.
Crimson Tide
Buena Vista
This intense, claustrophobic 1995 military thriller casts Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington as the commanding officer of a U.S. submarine and his executive officer who clash over an unclear order to launch a nuclear assault on an unstable Russia. Officers and crewmen are forced to choose sides in tight quarters when Denzel assumes command and is charged with mutiny. With the help of a dialogue polish by Quentin Tarantino, Scott's film crackles with electricity, capturing the disruptive, minefield repercussions of stalwart independent thinking in the chain of military command. The influence of Crimson Tide's continues today, with ABC's new fall series Last Resort borrowing all of its best moves from Tide.