As of this writing, police investigators and armchair pundits are no closer to fathoming the motivation behind the August 19th suicide of director Tony Scott than they were the moment it happened. Summarizing the bullet points from all the articles: age 68, wife and two children, no alleged terminal illnesses (despite early misled reports), and no zero-star reviews that should’ve been haunting him for any recent movies. (I could imagine a director with a film sitting at 0% on the Tomatometer questioning his life choices, though I would encourage them to persevere and love life anyway.)

In reviewing his directorial resumé, I learned one surprising fact: I’m not remotely qualified to deliver the ultimate critical essay on Scott’s artistic merits. Out of the 20+ films he helmed, I’ve seen six. I’m not sure if that says something about him or about me. On the other hand, I can think of many directors fewer of whose films I’ve watched than Scott’s (Kurosawa, Tarantino, Kubrick, Woody Allen, anyone working prior to 1960 except Hitchcock or John Ford…). There’re reasons why a search for “Tony Scott” on the Criterion Collection site yields only indirect results, but when I was successfully lured to one of his trademark high-octane action films, I usually appreciated the manic energy that infused them so thoroughly, and how the actors who worked best with him seemed to thrive on that energy.

These, then, are my memories of the late Mr. Scott where his works intersected with my viewing experience, for better or for worse. Not full-blown reviews — too soon, in a way — just my own memories, mostly drawn from times in my life when I would watch just about anything except 18th-century British TV dramas.

(Caveat for strict role-modeling purposes: just because I watched them at some previous time in my life doesn’t mean I’m recommending you catch them on Blu-ray immediately without regard for content.)

Top Gun — The film that put Scott on the map and is consequently name-checked in every single postmortem. I was a child of the ’80s, but I missed a lot of cultural touchstones the first time around (to this day, I’ve still never seen Pretty in Pink or Sixteen Candles, mandatory viewing for my peers). The first time I watched it was out of temporal context, in June 2000 as part of an online IRC chat in which several of us MST3K fans watched it simultaneously on cable while trading barbs back and forth. If I’d seen it when I was fourteen, I imagine my reaction and my world would’ve been very different.

The Last Boy Scout — Of the six films, this is arguably my all-time favorite, a showcase of Scott’s knack for hooking up with talented collaborators. Bruce Willis is basically John McClane at absolute rock bottom, and Damon Wayans succeeds in a rare attempt at a dramatic role, but what made it crackle for me was a Shane Black screenplay that knew it was just a big dumb odd-couple guy-flick, knew it wasn’t out to enlighten or change the world, and knew which buttons to keep pressing, holding, and slamming into the guy-flick control panel. When I was taping movies from cable TV in my college years, I liked this one so much, I recorded it on SP mode for the improved picture quality, even though that used up three times as much videotape. For me, that was serious appreciation.

True Romance — Like most guys of the time, I was drawn in by the credit “Written by Quentin Tarantino!” Unlike most guys of the time, I didn’t really care for it. I remember four distinct impressions from the one time I watched it at the theater:

1. A Mexican standoff? Again? Didn’t we just see that in the landmark that was Reservoir Dogs?
2. I never want to see Gary Oldman with dreadlocks again. Ever. Like, ever ever.
3. Heathers really was the pinnacle of Christian Slater’s career.
4. Is Sonny Chiba real, or did Tarantino make him up?

…but at least it wasn’t boring. I credited the directing for trumping the writing in that respect.

Crimson Tide — While I was putting the pieces of my head back together in my post-divorce years, I hung out with a friend regularly who would come over for frequent TV-show marathons and occasional movies. Gift-giving was hard because I was still in that young-male mode where I gave gifts I thought were cool, versus what the recipient might actually like. Dwelling on the criteria of (a) liked Das Boot, and (b) really likes Gene Hackman, I concluded (c) Crimson Tide would be the perfect gift! It wasn’t till some time after watching it together that I learned she really wasn’t a fan of strong language, or of films in which the plot consists of angry guys trying to out-macho each other. I thought it was high art, anyway. Fortunately she forgave me and married me several years later. That same VHS copy of Crimson Tide is still on our shelf, a token of times past.

Enemy of the State — In this corner, once again: Gene Hackman, ruler of anything he agreed to do. In the other corner: Will Smith, post-Fresh Prince and ruler of blockbuster sci-fi films at the time. Sadly I don’t recall their exchanges so much as I recall the two thousand different well-known supporting or character actors that overstuffed the film (Jack Black in a rare serious role!); the heavy use of state-of-the-art surveillance tech that seemed frighteningly sci-fi futuristic at the time, but which is now readily available in the form of Google Earth and the everyday gadgets in everyone’s pockets; and that one super-awesome crash where that black SUV kept flipping and flipping and flipping and just wouldn’t stop flipping. Where Top Gun was gung-ho Reagan-era zeitgeist, Enemy of the State was eerily prescient of a world where Big Brother not only rules, he also lets us have all the coolest toys.

Unstoppable — Scott made five films with Academy Award Winner Denzel Washington. I trust they got along famously. As nonstop adrenaline rushes go, Scott’s eye was in fine form here. Even more fun for me was the running theme of old man Denzel sparring with impudent punk Chris Pine about the younger generations supplanting their elders, before said elders are ready to exit and before said young’uns are truly ready to handle the reins. (I can only hope this wasn’t something close and personal to Scott’s own mindset…) I’m in-between their characters right now in terms of age, and fully able to sympathize with both sides of the argument. Watching past-Me debating future-Me had a certain intellectual allure to it. Also, there were EXPLOSIONS.

Seeing all those thoughts written out, the conclusion is easier to draw now: for me, the best Tony Scott films were all about the amazing adventures of the Man’s Man. For this achievement, I thank him and now have much to ponder about my own psyche.

It goes without saying that I really, really, really wish a better ending had been written.