When I heard that director Tony Scott took his life, I paused more than I expected. I’d long written off his films as overcooked excuses in directorial excess but… there was something about his oeuvre that nagged at me, something I suspect I didn’t want to acknowledge.
Then I read Dominic Corry‘s love post in the New Zealand Herald and I realised the mark Scott had left on me as a filmgoer. Despite inflicting Days of Thunder, Deja Vu, etc, on the world, between 1991 and 1995, he defined action films with muscle and panache with three films: doing justice to Shane Black‘s multimillion dollar script with The Last Boy Scout, showing a deft restraint with Quentin Tarantino‘s True Romance, and showing a hitherto unknown knack for intelligent, buttock-clenching tension with Crimson Tide.
Those films are among my touchstones.
And for that, I’m grateful to Mr Scott.
Travel safe.
