The Nice Guys
(2016 review)

4 outta 5

Written and directed by Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man Three), The Nice Guys is a hilarious and entreatingly zippy piece of ‘70s noir detective buddy action comedy.  As with noir detective stories sometimes a very simple whodunit plot gets overtly complicated but this is really an excuse to have the two leads make lots of gags.  It has the typical fast paced quipping that defines Black’s work, cribs a few bits from noir classics and a lot of unexpected moments.   For a movie about murder, beatings, scamming, pornography and ‘70s excess, it’s surprisingly upbeat and fun.  

Private Investigator March (Ryan Gosling) is working cases for cash so he can provide for his daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice) but this runs him headfirst into a scummy professional arm breaker, Healy (Russell Crowe).  After some initial awkwardness of trying to beat each other up, they both end up on a case to find a missing girl, Amelia (Margaret Qualley).  But the further they investigate, the deeper it goes into a ring of porn, murders and conspiracies.  They’re trying to solve the case but March may be too drunk and Healy may be too brutal for them to uncover the truth.  

There isn’t a lot of learning in this movie, the guys are pretty much the same screw ups throughout but Gosling and Crowe compliment each other perfectly.   It’s a classic comedy duo with a straight man, Crowe, and crazy guy, Gosling, however they both get opportunities to trade roles every once in awhile.  Crowe is in full burly jerk mode, basically a bull in a china shop, slamming his way through problems.   He doesn’t exactly make jokes but more like curt, irritated pronouncements.  Gosling gets in a whole lot of wacky reactions to the violence going on around him. Instead of being a tough guy he often turns into a whiny pansy like when he finds a dead body and makes vague whimpering noises.  The relationship with his daughter is actually kind of heartfelt as he treats her as an equal.  There are more than a few moments where Holly causes trouble when she clearly doesn’t need to be there which seems like an artificial way to raises the stakes however Rice is really funny so it gets a pass. 

As the mysterious girl they’re chasing, Amelia pops up in unexpected places and then quickly skedaddles.  When they finally get to talk to Amelia, she lays out the huge conspiracy in a hyper-active, babbling way that Qualley delivers with pep, and her exit is nicely subversive.  Kim Basinger pops up as Amelia’s concerned mother to basically drop some exposition and there’s a fun visual gag when she’s writing a large cheque for the guys to find her daughter and March offers half the amount so she nonchalantly rips the cheque up.   There are several antagonists, starting with the always dependable Keith David saying things seriously and Beau Knapp as a minor goon who unfortunately gets a dye pack exploded in his face.   His blue face is an interesting visual quirk for a baddie that could be seen as filler.  The real villainy is Matt Bomer as a killer assassin.  Like a lot of villains in Shane Black movies, he calmly states the horrible things he is about to do and then proceeds to do so.  

There are a lot of interesting swerves in Nice Guys, leading the audience along to expect one thing from genre conventions and then make a hard left.  One of the best action scenes is barely an action scene where March and Healy take a long elevator ride, see lots of violence explode around them, and then quickly walk back into the elevator.   It’s a great, twisted, and amusing moment that implies epic chaotic violence while showing only glimpses.   The final shootout at a swanky hotel is a multi-level piece of co-ordinated chaos that only gets a little cornball when Haley is close to killing someone which may upset March’s daughter.   The script by Black and Anthony Bagarozzi offers a rapid fire series of great one-liners and sarcastic asides.  Even a random bartender gets in a great quip when the guys asked him if he witnessed something personally and the bartender bites back, “No, a wise old Indian told me.”  While action movies have gotten progressively homogenized, this has some decent blood splatter and a lot of colourful language.  The movie also has fun with the time period, like when ‘70s wastrel hippies are protesting the quality of air in Los Angeles and March and Healy try to question them while pointing out logical fallacies in the protesters theme.     

The Nice Guys is a throwback in a lot of ways, not just the ‘70s period but also by making an edgy action comedy.  Mass audience friendly action comedy movies make more money but Nice Guys shows that it’s more fun if a film can be crude.  Throughout, Black throws decent curveballs and the two actors are fantastic.  The nice guys may be hapless losers but their movie is extremely cool.