Funny, irreverent, with more than a touch of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang about it, The Nice Guys is an action-crime comedy that has the same director and writer – Shane Black – at the helm and stars Russell Crowe (Gladiator) and Ryan Gosling (The Big Short). Black also wrote Lethal Weapon and Iron Man 3, so he has strong pedigree in the genre.
The Nice Guys unfolds in Los Angeles in 1977, when down-on-his-luck private eye Holland March (Gosling) and hired enforcer Jackson Healy (Crowe) become the unlikeliest of partners. I say unlikeliest because their introduction to one another doesn’t go well, with Healy breaking March’s arm … and simultaneously advising him what to tell the doctor treating it. Subsequently working together, they have to find a missing girl, Amelia (Margaret Qualley) who seems to have a target on her back.
Writer/director Black talks about LA in the ‘70s as a rotting town “where smog covered the city like a crust and Hollywood Boulevard had turned into (a) cesspool of pornography. “In this scenario, you get these two numb nuts who kind of stumble into shoes they can never fill when they uncover this huge conspiracy,” Black says. There is decadence and corruption and for Black it was then a case of how “unsettlingly inappropriate” he could make these two guys. The answer … oh so very!
March drinks like a fish and Healy just cracks heads. For all intents and purposes, these guys look like they are stumbling around in the dark, but then – of course – that is the point.
The Nice Guys is a subversive detective story. Black co-wrote the screenplay with Anthony Bagarozzi, starting out with each focused on one of the central roles. The pair had a mutual love of pulp crime novels and wanted to do a private eye project. Bagarozzi puts it well when he says Crowe and Gosling are kind of jerks when we meet them. One beats people up for a living and the other, although a private investigator, is barely one step up from a con man. “The idea that these two are our heroes was fun for us because they’re almost the opposite of heroic at every turn. But I think that’s the thing we liked most – that you could have such anti-hero heroes,” Bagarozzi says.
I totally agree. The concept of a sacrilegious anti-hero may not be new (just look at the wickedly funny Deadpool), but if handled appropriate it brings laughs and audience engagement. And so it is here.
Both Crowe and Gosling make what they do look easy, but – of course – that is the art form. Appropriately, their foil is March’s young daughter, and like Chloe Grace Moretz in Kick-Ass, but with slightly different sensibilities and proclivities, Angourie Rice makes these guys better – better sleuths and better people. March’s dysfunctional relationship with Holly leads to wildly inappropriate behavior – all done for laughs, of course. She is vexed by his shortcomings and trying to keep him on track, but he is continually slipping.
Some of the scenes are, indeed, very funny and Crowe and Gosling’s droll delivery gives the movie extra bite. While certain elements of the screenplay could certainly be questioned in terms of ensuring the story hangs together as well as, perhaps, it could have, there is no mistaking the overall tenor of what is produced here. And that, my friends, is a winner, which will undoubtedly resonate with audiences the world over. Also featuring Kim Basinger, The Nice Guys, rated MA, scores a 7½ to 8 out of 10.
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Kim Basinger
Release Date: 26 May 2016
Rating: MA15+ – Strong violence, sex, nudity and coarse language
Alex First
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television