Ridley Scott films – ranked!
20. A Good Year (2006)
A film to prove that straight-up feelgood comedy is not Ridley Scott’s forte and casting his favourite leading man is no guarantee of success, either. This is based on a novel by Peter “A Year in Provence” Mayle: incredibly, it is Russell Crowe playing the quirkily conceited yet adorable Brit who inherits a sumptuous house-plus-vineyard in the south of France, comes over intending to sell it, but instead falls in love with the place and all the picturesque Frenchness thereabouts, including Marion Cotillard.
19. Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
A director’s cut was later to redeem some of its reputation but basically this period action movie from war-torn 12th-century Europe still feels like a bombastic liberal fantasy. Orlando Bloom plays a young blacksmith – the illegitimate son of nobleman Liam Neeson – who joins the Crusades not to drive the Muslims out of the Holy Land, but to broker peace. Weirdly, Scott returned to the tricky issue of the Crusades in Robin Hood (see below).
18. Black Rain (1989)
Here is Michael Douglas in his action-lead heyday, playing a tough and ruthless cop adrift in Japan’s smoky, rainy, neon-lit Osaka – an urban locale that’s slightly reminiscent of Scott’s Blade Runner. Douglas and his cop partner, played by Andy Garcia, capture a Yakuza gangster in New York, then come to Osaka and hand him over to people they believe to be police but are in fact Yakuza in disguise. So Douglas has to journey into the dark infernal heart of Yakuza gangland to recapture his man. The action sequences are a bit perfunctory.
17. GI Jane (1997)
Demi Moore plays the wannabe
