A Journey Back to the 70s

Rating: 9/10 (4 June 2016)

Okay, like a lot of movies, I wasn't really all that sure what to expect from this one, except that from the poster ads it seem like one of those buddy movies (I didn't check out the trailer on IMDb, nor did I see one at the cinema). Okay, from the brief synopsis it said something about a couple of detectives and the porn industry, so I was a little unsure, expecting it to be a little sleazy. However, while it was a little sleazy, it was also absolutely hilarious – in your typical black comedy type of way (and yes, the comedy was really black, especially what happened to one of the bodies that they accidentally discovered).
Anyway, the film opens in 1977 (and the entire film is set in the late seventies) with a kid stealing one of his father's girly magazines from under his bed. Suddenly the girl in the centerfold comes crashing through his house (in a car) and in the valley below. We are then introduced to the two main characters: Healy, who is a strong man that basically discourages sleazes from messing with young girls; and March, who is sort of a private detective, but makes his money more by ripping off his clients than actually solving cases. They end up crossing each other's paths when they both become involved with a young girl named Amelia – Healy being hired to deal with a couple of guys that are following her, and March to actually track her down. As what ends up happening in such cases, both of them quickly discover that they are right out of their depth. Not only is Amelia mixed up in the porn industry, but somebody is going around killing her associates one by one.
The thing that I really liked about the film was the retro feel about it, while dealing with issues that are still relevant today – pollution and environmental degradation, government corruption, and corporate white washing of scientific evidence. As the film opens we are told that Los Angeles is facing a smog crisis, though while at first this seems to be a bit of background information, it soon become evident that this is a major part of the movie's plot (especially since Amelia is involved in an environmental protest group). It also soon becomes clear that the death of the porn star Misty Mountain is connected to this hunt for Amelia (though the lady that hires March swears that she saw Misty Mountain in her house two days after her death).
The thing is that this film is a detective film, and one that harks back to the 70s style of detective mystery. It is not so much a 21st Century film set in the 1970s, but rather a 1970s style film that was made in the 21st Century. In fact it was this real retro feel about this film, and that it shows how the concerns we have today are very much the same concerns we had back in the 70s, that was the main reason that I really enjoyed this movie. Oh, and also that it had me in fits of laughter.