[yasr_overall_rating]
A mismatched pair of private eyes investigate the apparent suicide of a fading porn star in 1970s Los Angeles.
Shane Black is a double threat in Hollywood. Not only is he an imaginative and resourceful writer (“Lethal Weapon,” “Lethal Weapon 2,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight”), he is also an innovational and quick-witted director (“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” “Iron Man 3”). When you combine all of those attributes for “The Nice Guys,” you have a buddy movie which is full of snappy dialogue, hilarious one-liners, and exceptional character development between two men who from the onset, seem so displaced alongside each other but as the film progresses, Mr. Black surreptitiously works his magic and you realize that no other pair of Hollywood actors could have filled the roles herein as perfectly as Mr. Crowe and Mr. Gosling.
As is the norm with a Shane Black movie, we have unconventional and offbeat characters whose lives intersect with each other, but many of them don’t realize it until much later on in the story. Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a well-known private investigator who lives with his young teenage daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) in the Hollywood hills. When a famous porn star named Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio) winds up dead, the result of a supposed car accident, initially her death is written off as such but after Misty’s aunt hires him because she swears she saw her at her old house two days after her death, the case becomes embroiled in mystery. When Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), a less well-known private eye comes into the picture, he and Holland don’t get along but given the fact that they are both working the same case, they decide to team up together in order to try and solve it.
Their investigation takes them into the porn world of the 1970s, where they discover another girl named Amelia (Margaret Qualley), a dead-ringer for Misty and who just happens to be the daughter of Judith Kuttner (Kim Basinger), the head of the Justice Department. When Amelia winds up dead, Holland and Jackson quickly ascertain that Amelia and her recently deceased boyfriend, were trying to expose a citywide conspiracy that goes all the way to the top, pointing its finger directly at her mother. Along the way, they stumble across hookers, hitmen, hoodlums and the occasional mermaid, conventional characters for 1970s Hollywood, at least according to this Hollywood film.
The movie has an eclectic soundtrack including Captain & Tennille, KISS, Earth, Wind & Fire, and The Bee Gees and Mr. Black successfully captures the essence and atmosphere of 1970s Hollywood. While the overall story has been filmed numerous times before, the combination of Mr. Crowe and Mr. Gosling onscreen and Mr. Black behind-the-scenes, makes for one of the most entertaining and gut-busting movies in years.
In theaters May 20th
