AViolent Screwball Bromance

Rating: 7/10 (17 July 2016)

This is a bromance bashed up with an action film and whipped into a kind of armed screwball comedy. It stars damned slowly because the critical parts are so far apart, but thereafter it moves along in sprightly fashion, syncopated to much gunfire (the great shootout is the most delightfully non-lethal since 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'). Ryan Gosling plays a professional, licensed private eye who, despite his ineptitude, is rather snooty toward Russel Crowe whose role is that of muscle-for-hire with occasional heart of gold. After the latter whacks the hell out of the former, clinically breaking his arm in the process, they begin to come to an understanding and find they're on, like it or not, the same side of the same absurdly complicated case. Slam-bang: lots of fisticuffs, a couple of killings, enough blood and plenty of mindless fun. Ryan Gosling is especially good.