Another clever neo-noir comedy from Shane Black

Rating: 7/10 (24 December 2016)

In many ways, Shane Black's "The Nice Guys" is just his earlier film, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," playing 1970s dress up. Considering it's been more than 10 years since that hilarious crime comedy, I'll gladly take "Nice Guys" being any semblance of it.
Like "Kiss Kiss," "Nice Guys" takes place in Hollywood and tells the story of a tough guy and a bumbling idiot trying to solve a case involving a dead/missing women. Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is muscle for hire who's been paid by a young woman named Amelia (Margaret Qualley) to keep some guys off her back. He runs in with Holland March (Ryan Gosling), a private investigator living with his teenage daughter (Angourie Rice) who has been asked to investigate the death of porn star Misty Mountains, a job that led him to track down Amelia. When Healy realizes there are some other folks after Amelia, he and March team up to find her and figure out why there's a trail of bodies everywhere she goes.
Crowe gets to play stoic tough guy again alongside Gosling, who gets a rare opportunity to do physical comedy as March, a heavy drinker, womanizer and moron whose daughter is a better detective than he is. There's always something subdued about Goslings' performances and in this case it helps balance how over the top his character is written. Again, March echoes Robert Downey Jr.'s Harry Lockhart from "Kiss Kiss," another guy who is in way over his head, suffers an injury that follows him throughout the movie and makes a fool of himself in the face of danger.
Black continues to own his niche as one of Hollywood's best buddy comedy architects and these neo-noir comedies are his finest work. This screenplay (co-written with Anthony Bagarozzi) is witty, of course, as always, squeezing laughs out of violence and sex in clever ways that usually involve putting his characters in uncomfortable situations.
"Nice Guys" has all the naked bodies and action that you associate with stereotypical adult male entertainment in movies, but Black is somehow always classy and purposeful about it. Hollywood in the late '70s was certainly seedy, a time when the country was rife with vice, but there's a thematic element of being a decent person in indecent circumstances. Of course, this was also a theme of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." Both films feature characters covering up exposed women in vulnerable moments.
Despite being a mystery of sorts, the plot is more about the turns than the twists. Black is so good at taking the audience by surprise without needing to engage in smoke and mirrors. Very little happens in predictable fashion, even if that necessitates exaggeration or implausibility, which Black usually ensures will play to humorous effect.
The strong sense of danger that makes "Nice Guys" highly entertaining, however, don't completely mask its emotional deficits. Considering the father-daughter relationship at play, dialogue alluding to the problems with the lack of morality of the era and some mentions of the characters' tragic pasts, it's a bit surprising that the film never operates much beyond face value. The "conspiracy" hiding at the end of the trail of clues also doesn't mean anything other than raising the stakes.
"Nice Guys" doesn't quite measure up to "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," but both are effortlessly entertaining films that will remain easy to watch for a long time. In fact, Black could role out another neo-noir comedy with the same footprint in 5 to 10 years and I'd watch and enjoy it all the same.
~Steven C
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