The Nice Guys: Marriage Is Buying A House For Someone You Hate

This is a review for two movies.

When I was in high school, around 17 years old, I liked to go movie hopping at the AMC in Ontario, California. We would have half days every other Wednesday.  I'd leave school early with a girlfriend, or a friend, or whoever would go to the movies with me and we'd head "down the hill". We'd stop at my favorite burrito place and head to the AMC to see two to three movies in a day (paying for only one, of course).  One time, in 2005, I went and saw a film that I hadn't heard of called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring a, then irrelevant, Robert Downey Jr., and a, surprisingly still relevant Val Kilmer.  This movie wasn't widely advertised or distributed.  However, sitting there, watching one of the most hilarious and unique films of my teen years, I realized this was going to be one of my favorite movies of all time. Box office wise, it tanked. Critically (and I didn't know this because rottentomatoes wasn't really a thing yet, either), it soared. So, when it came out on DVD, I purchased it immediately and showed it to everyone I could think of.  No one had heard of it either because for some reason it didn't get a wide release, and somehow I was able to stumble upon it in the asshole of the Inland Empire, Ontario. But, every person I showed it to loved it [almost] as much as me. This movie was also responsible for the career resurrection of Downey Jr. It's the reason he was cast as Iron Man and began his second reign as an A-list celebrity. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a movie that defines my late teen years and one of my biggest inspirations to become a writer. As I did some digging, I researched the writer/director, one Shane Black.  I come to find out that he wrote some of my all-time favorite movies including: Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, and the movie/script I've probably seen/read more than any of them (that I'm sure you probably haven't heard of), The Long Kiss Goodnight.  His writing style is so unique and quippy and quick and clever that my dream is to one day be as half as good as him, now officially claiming him as my favorite screenwriter.

So, where is all this going?

I preface with that "anecdote" in order to call upon two points: 1) If you have not seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, then immediately find it somewhere and watch it because it's one of the most intelligent and quick-witted movies I've ever seen. And 2) to get you keenly, and immediately aware of how good and well-written The Nice Guys is. Shane Black, after tackling the big-budget summer popcorn genre with Iron Man 3 goes back to his roots of the buddy action-comedy. There are essentially two staples to a Shane Black script (that doesn't involve Marvel): Christmas and irresistible chemistry between the two leads of the film (I mean, the dude wrote Lethal Weapon when he was twenty-one). The Nice Guys is no different, well, minus the Christmas.  It's a throw-back film to both the buddy flick and a bit of noir as well. But, it's without a doubt, my favorite movie of the year so far.

Without giving much away, The Nice Guys follows two private investigators Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) and Holland March (Ryan Gosling) as they try and solve a missing persons case throughout the bowels of late 70s Los Angeles. The two have their own personal interests at heart and don't exactly mesh well with one another, however their interests cross paths and-- tada!-- they're forced to work together (something that sounds cliche, but is handled very creatively). Along the way is March's 13-year-old daughter Holly, who just so happens to steal every scene that she's in.

There is a lot that goes right within the film-- first off the chemistry between the two leads.  When I'm looking for a smaller summer comedy, my first instinct isn't to find the "comedy" that stars Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling as they don't necessarily strike me as actors with the best comedic timing and ability to improvise. Either I'm completely wrong, or the script is handled so sharply that all they had to do was act. I'm going with the former on this one because I was/am shocked at how well they play off one another with such great comedic timing. This is a duo that I could watch in three, four, five sequels and not get tired (in theory).

There's also the story.  It's a wonderful balance of slapstick and violence that it legitimately has everything a viewer looks for in a film. We go to movies to be entertained and that's exactly what this film does-- it seeks to entertain while still telling a very clever story. There's mystery, there's explosions, there's shoot-outs, there's quippy back-and-forths, there's heart, there's everything. Without resorting to lazy writing and and an abundance of CGI, this film is able to stand tall among the giants of the summer blockbusters. Unfortunately, it's probably not going to make the money it deserves. Sandwiched in between two Marvel films and three animated kids movies, this will probably be the one that you keep telling yourself and others that you want to see, but don't actually make your way to the theater to see it.  I urge you to put the rest of the summer fare on the backburner and make this movie the priority. Movies like this one should be the reason to go to the theater. And a movie like this solidifies Shane Black as still my favorite screenwriter in Hollywood.

A