The Nice Guys

Synopsis:  Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a down-on-his-luck private eye in 1977 Los Angeles. He’s been hired by Mrs Glenn (Lois Smith), the aunt of Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio), a big name porn star who Glenn claims to have seen shortly after she supposedly died in a car crash.  At the same time Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is a hired enforcer who hurts people for a living. His young client, Amelia (Margaret Qualley) wants him to ‘warn off’ a couple of guys who are following her – one of whom is March.  But when Amelia mysteriously disappears, Healy and March are hired by her mother, the Head of the Justice Department (Kim Basinger) to find her. Their investigation takes them into the world of lowlife pornographers, ritzy parties, corruption and hired killers where everyone associated with a mysterious porno film called How Do You Like My Car? seems to wind up dead.

This latest outing from writer/director Shane Black is a throwback to the kind of comic-action-buddy-movies of the ‘70s which, as a screenwriter he so successfully rebooted in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s with the Lethal Weapon franchise. Here, the convoluted plot is really an excuse for a lot of very funny scenes where Crowe and Gosling get to strut their comedy chops and, for two actors not widely known for funny business, they’re pretty good. Crowe, who’s either bulked up or is sporting a very convincing fat suit, relies mostly on funny lines and ‘going the biff’ and Gosling shows his skill at some laugh-out-loud physical comedy along with an oddly-placed but spot-on Lou Costello impersonation. They’re assisted very ably by young Australian actor Angourie Rice who was only so-so in last year’s The Nowhere Boys:The Book of Shadows, but is terrific here as March’s wise-cracking older-than-her-years daughter, Holly. She’s the glue that binds the buddy relationship and the mirror that forces both of them to look more deeply into their flawed characters in order to mend their ways.

The film’s tone, however, shifts a bit uneasily between wanting to give us a real, hard-boiled PI story and being a tongue-in-cheek parody of that genre. At times it succeeds at both but never really coalesces as one or the other in the way that a film like Martin Brest’s Midnight Run (1988) does. Where it excels, though, is in its evocation of the ‘70s, opening with a nicely subtle reference to the dilapidated state of the iconic Hollywood sign (before its restoration a year after the film is set, one O had fallen down and another had splintered) and there are plenty of allusions to the fuel crisis, to the rising smog levels, student protests and a very funny Nixon reference. And, if you’re quick, there’s also a reference to Black’s first directorial feature, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), a film which, to my mind, is better than this one.

Although I laughed a lot and was very happy to go along for the ride I would have been even happier if the mystery that drives the action was more satisfying. I couldn’t help being reminded of my favourite film in this genre, Robert Benton’s The Late Show, made in the year this film is set. It’s just as funny but Benton outdoes Black when it comes to story and emotion.

The final scene in The Nice Guys leaves the door open for a sequel. There’s certainly a foundation for another go around but, if it comes, I’d hope to see Black build on the great dynamic between the two blokes and the teenage girl and give them a more genuinely gripping private-eye thriller story to inhabit.  

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