As Hollywood processes the apparent suicide of filmmaker Tony Scott reports — included a report that he jumped to his death wearing the lucky (faded) red baseball cap that he first donned on the set of his blockbuster his Top Gun — I prefer to dwell, not on Scott's tragic death, but his life in movies. In Roger Ebert's review of Scott's essential True Romance, the critic wrote: "This is the kind of movie that creates its own universe, and glories in it." I actually think that assessment applies to most of Scott's work and is what made him special as a filmmaker. Even when his movies weren't cohesive — Domino or The Hunger come to mind— they were still worth watching and impossible to dismiss because they were filled with provocative ideas, images and themes that amounted to something more than a collection of scenes, acts and dialogue. Below, my list of Scott's best movies. If you have a different list in mind, check out our Movieline poll where you can vote for your favorite Scott movie.
1. True Romance (1993): Quentin Tarantino usually gets the lion's share of the credit for this adrenaline-stoking orgy of action and violence because he wrote the script, but it was Scott who shaped QT's words and the performances of a killer cast — Christian Slater (at his peak), Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken (both memorable), Brad Pitt and an undiscovered James Gandolfini — into a sexy, bloody rocket ride that, almost 20 years later, still thrills and still influences filmmakers.
2. Top Gun (1986): Arguably the movie that defines American confidence — and cockiness — during the Reagan era. Full of hard bodies, fast aircraft and Tom Cruise's beautifully aerodynamic smile, Top Gun makes you feel, as the line goes, "the need for speed." Scott was working on a sequel before his death, and Cruise was supposed to play a role in it. I was looking forward to seeing where Scott was going to take this idea.
3. Crimson Tide (1995): This movie has been given short shrift in the obituaries of Scott that are accruing, but it is not to be missed. Crimson Tide is that rare thing: an intelligent popcorn movie. Like the U.S. nuclear sub Alabama on which the movie is set, Crimson Tide runs fast and deep--and yet inside its sleek Hollywood hull are a lot of smart and thorny ideas about leadership, compliance and the ramifications of nuclear war. Scott makes the most of Michael Schiffer's screenplay and memorable performances by Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington.
4. Enemy of the State (1998): A prescient film and a fine example of Scott's fascination with the technological — and by extension, social and cultural — revolution that took place during his career as a filmmaker. Almost three years before the Bush administration's reaction to 9/11 had Americans questioning how much of their First Amendment rights they were willing to sacrifice for national security, Scott gave us this over-the-top look at our surveillance society run amok. Technology is as much the star here as Will Smith, but the actor who steals the show is Gene Hackman, who pays clever homage to his performance as surveilliance-expert Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film, The Conversation.
5 . The Hunger (1983): Scott's first feature film is a mess, but it's worth watching again, if only for the memorable opening scene (below) in which ultra-hip vampire couple David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve catch Goth pioneers Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi Is Dead" at a nightclub, where they pick up their next meal: Ann Magnuson. The concert-to carnage sequence plays like the creepiest MTV video ever.
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