TSPDT

Key Production Countries: USA, UK
Key Genres: Action, Thriller, Action Thriller, Crime Thriller, Paranoid Thriller, Drama, Political Thriller, Sports Drama, Buddy Film
Key Collaborators: Jerry Bruckheimer (Producer), Chris Lebenzon (Editor), Christian Wagner (Editor), Harry Gregson-Williams (Composer), Denzel Washington (Leading Actor), Don Simpson (Producer), Hans Zimmer (Composer), Chris Seagers (Production Designer), Benjamin Fernandez (Production Designer), Jeffrey Kimball (Cinematographer), Dan Mindel (Cinematographer), Billy Weber (Editor)

"Tony Scott has the visual sensibility of a maker of commercials, and an attitude to material and narrative that is absurd without ever taking off into the fanciful. He likely believes in the overheated nastiness of The Hunger, Revenge, and The Fan, just as he can believe in the presentation of women in his two Tom Cruise pictures (one film really—different forms of propulsion). Crimson Tide, with the high-class professionalism of Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, is his most watchable film, but even there nothing sustains belief except the confinement of the submarine." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"A lover of fast cars and motorbikes on the screen and off, and a lifelong rock climber, Scott was adept at injecting thrills into his slick films. This approach rarely brought him critical acclaim and his movies were sometimes unfavourably compared with the more ambitious, philosophical works of his older brother Sir Ridley Scott… Unlike Ridley, he was never nominated for an Oscar. Nonetheless, several of Tony's films were rewarded with huge commercial success as audiences bought wholeheartedly into his vision." - Joel McIver (The Guardian, 2012)

"Tony Scott is probably the ultimate post-MTV film-maker. Born in the UK in 1944 and educated at Leeds College of Art and Royal College of Art, he formed part of a wave of British-born Hollywood directors emergent from the field of advertising in the 1970s (including his brother, Ridley). Scott's films have been unashamedly commercial and, working mostly within the action-thriller genres, he directed some of the most financially successful features of the 1980s for the production team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. This creative collaboration helped to re-define commercial American cinema, placing an emphasis on slick, high-concept narratives while drawing heavily from the diffused, neon-tinged visual style of music videos and commercials, complete with rapid-fire editing and prominent rock soundtracks." - Neil Jackson (Contemporary British and Irish Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide, 2001)

"Lots of people make movies where big things explode and mismatched duos find common ground in the face of adversity. But few did it with as much panache as Tony Scott, the filmmaker behind movies like Top Gun, Unstoppable, and Crimson Tide. Though not all these projects were critically acclaimed in their day, they manage to reflect how Scott went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to delivering blockbuster spectacle. The recurring motifs of this man’s filmography show that, just because you can phone in big-budget VFX-heavy movies, doesn’t mean you should." - Douglas Laman (Collider, 2022)

"Tony is both Ridley Scott's younger brother and an ersatz version of the Alien director. His films are more crass, brazen and thrilling, with an insistent focus on steely surfaces, shiny objects and military hardware… At his best, Scott hard-wires his movies straight into the central nervous system, as he did with the terrific paranoid conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State (1998), Crimson Tide (1995) and the CIA action drama Spy Game (2001). It's all the more surprising when this fail-safe formula fails, as it did in Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987), Days of Thunder (1990), The Last Boy Scout (1991, The Fan (1996), Revenge (1990), Man on Fire (2004), Domino (2005) and Deja Vu (2006)." - Lloyd Hughes (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)