Reception
The film performed under expectations given the star power and hype surrounding the then record price paid for the screenplay by Shane Black ($1.75 million). Roger Ebert gave the film three stars, saying it was "a superb example of what it is: a glossy, skillful, cynical, smart, utterly corrupt and vilely misogynistic action thriller". It has a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.7 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database. Reviews were mixed, and some critics cited the Christmas time release for such a violent film as a reason for its somewhat underwhelming box office. It grossed $7,923,669 in its opening weekend, and the total gross was $59,509,925. Although the film was not a blockbuster, it helped Bruce Willis recover his star status after the disastrous Hudson Hawk, and both turned a profit at the box office and became hugely popular in the video rental market.
Read more about this topic: The Last Boy Scout
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)