The Nice Guys

THE NICE GUYS

Director : Shane Black

Year : 2016

Genre : Comedy

Rating : ****

 

Having made the second highest* grossing superhero movie of all time with the critically dividing 2013 blockbuster 'Iron Man 3', Shane Black returns to his neo-noir roots with 'The Nice Guys', a sleazy yet hilarious black comedy that showcases the 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' director at his very best.  Starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling as two private investigators who must delve deep into the sordid world of 1970's pornography to uncover the truth about the mysterious murder of a fading adult film star, the sarcastically titled 'The Nice Guys' certainly pulls no punches when it comes to hard boiled violence and envenomated vulgarity - with dozens of f-bombs, scenes of female frontal nudity and spontaneous explosions of crunchy, gory death making regular appearances throughout the films overlong running time. But as is the case with any true Shane Black product, 'The Nice Guys' deftly manages to balance it's harder edged contents with a healthy dose of well-written postmodern humour and silly, Buster Keaton-esque slapstick making it, ironically, one of the funniest films of the year so far. Crowe and Gosling have fantastically acerbic screen chemistry as the two chalk-and-cheese detectives who must reluctantly learn to work together to solve the increasingly bizarre case while the script, revived from a 2001 screenplay co-written with Anthony Bagarozzi, contains the same nostalgic verve and metatextual punch of Black's self penned 'The Long Kiss Goodnight' and the aforementioned 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'.

*at time of writing