It is a wonder how well Ryan Gosling can do comedy.
Sure, we got a taste of it in Adam McKay's scathingly hilarious 'The Big Short', where he, playing badass banker Jared Vennett, becomes the film's unlikely snake oil salesman, a smooth-tongued, edgy scoundrel who eggs the bewildered rakes around him to make millions out of the losses of people. But downright tomfoolery in a sun-and-neon lit Los Angeles of the 70s was always going to be tough for the golden-haired boy, who was last seen in the City Of Lights as the simmering, laconic getaway driver in the hypnotic 'Drive'.
In the Shane Black universe, however, anything can happen.
So, we have Gosling in his goofiest best- playing a bumbling, literally drunk on the job private eye Holland March trying to poke out ugly truths from the seedier nooks and crannies of Los Angeles. Black's gloriously unhinged crime caper lets it rip without wasting minutes- we have March pitted with downbeat off-the-law enforcer Jackson Healy, played with disarming ease by a top-form Russel Crowe, as they try to locate a missing porn actress, shortly after one, named delectably as Misty Mountains, is bumped off.
There we have it- a textbook California noir template, harnessed effectively by master filmmakers into memorable films. There are corpses, there are fast cars, meanies with guns, seductive femme fatales and the real kingpins concealed out of sight, as we follow our two less-than-ideal dogged investigators uncovering a hornet's nest of scandal and conspiracy. There is a touch of 'Chinatown' in 'The Nice Guys'- the water shortage politics of that Roman Polanski masterpiece are here recycled as an important parallel subplot of air pollution levels on the rise due to more Cadillacs on the streets (one fascinating scene has gas-masked activists playing dead) and the stoned-out tenor of the film's outrageous comedy is a blend of Paul Thomas Anderson's both 'Boogie Nights' and 'Inherent Vice'. But this film is admirably and lovably lighter than all these, crucially as it is armed with that dazzling Black element, so rare in films these days- a heady dose of bouncy spunk.
This is a film, as its title suggests, about mismatched cops, or rather wannabe cops, trying to unravel a tangled mess of murder and seedy crime and ending up like real buddies, sparking off in a chemistry that makes even the unabashed silliness all around gushingly endearing. 'The Nice Guys' might be a 70s-style noir caper and it serves up all the glossy period detail in pomp and show, sure but it is closer in vein to one of those deliriously thrilling buddy cop actioners in the 80s. It is hardly surprising since Black was the one who penned 'Lethal Weapon'; if you go on a high watching those classic Riggs-Murtaugh escapades, you qualify for this too, gladly.
There are as much spills as much thrills in the film, even as it often stays sophisticated enough by piling on enough crazily entertaining twists and turns to let us want to sneak beyond the alluringly zingy exterior of the film's milieu. Black has always offered a healthy dose of bang-up thrills but he has also stealthily, sneakily sniggered at the formula cliches and 'The Nice Guys' is no different. It has enough of an enthralling cocktail of all the elements of a typical crime caper- not to forget those charged bursts of gunplay in between- but it never ever stops having a ball of a time as well.
There are splendidly choreographed comic scenes in the film- I can't forget, for quite sometime, Gosling's March goofing up his investigator routine from time to time- (him trapped inside a toilet will send up the audiences in side-splitting chuckles)- that would feel out of place of a more serious film. Black and co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi balance the audacity of the film's excellent gags with the sharp irony of its banter. The fascinating cast of crooks and cops gets to trade excellently timed, foul-mouthed wisecracks faster than the bullets that fly around. At the same time, there is an unexpected tenderness to the proceedings, mostly because of Healy's straightup diligence to his task. It is this oddly entertaining mix of the sweet and the silly that makes even the more questionable decisions of the plot as masterstrokes of unabashed nonsense.
The cast is reliably excellent all around and special mention should go to the fabulous ladies who come in all ages. Angourie Rice, playing March's doe-eyed yet bright daughter, lends an unlikely helping hand to the private-eye misadventures of the central pair while Yaya DaCosta's deceptive Tally looks in one scene as killer as Pam Grier in one of her Blaxploitation classics. Kim Basinger has a stellar cameo as a shifty head of justice at the helm of this maze of a game and Margaret Qualley as Amelia captures all the wide-eyed bewilderment of a really rookie porn actress in a film, 'where the plot is the point'.
There is no matching the charismatic duo and both Crowe and Gosling are in terrific, swashbuckling form as they go on, hitting a dynamic that drives all great buddy movies like this. Individually, Crowe is reliably great in his world-weary, dogged essence of a doughy version of Martin Riggs with a hidden core of mushy warmth. But with no disrespect to others, this is Gosling's film, totally. He is an utter revelation as an out-of-his-league yet endlessly charming character and he makes both his calm, blazing wisecracks as well as the hilarious gags work spectacularly.
'The Nice Guys' is classic Shane Black-style entertainment served in a funky 70s glass, happily drunk on the glossy colors of the era and capturing details, both big and small with brassy style. Master lensman Philippe Rousselot captures both the sweeping Cadillac fenders as well as the long side-burns and Afros with true mastery while the Black-isms are endlessly inventive (March insists in the end that people were not hurt because they died quickly). Like last year's 'The Man From UNCLE', this is one of those saucy nostalgia trips that stays so enjoyably nutty in its own witty and whimsical way. Watch it best through 'glasses made from Coke bottles' and be ready to be rocked and rolled.
My Rating- 4 Stars Out Of 5
Sure, we got a taste of it in Adam McKay's scathingly hilarious 'The Big Short', where he, playing badass banker Jared Vennett, becomes the film's unlikely snake oil salesman, a smooth-tongued, edgy scoundrel who eggs the bewildered rakes around him to make millions out of the losses of people. But downright tomfoolery in a sun-and-neon lit Los Angeles of the 70s was always going to be tough for the golden-haired boy, who was last seen in the City Of Lights as the simmering, laconic getaway driver in the hypnotic 'Drive'.
In the Shane Black universe, however, anything can happen.
So, we have Gosling in his goofiest best- playing a bumbling, literally drunk on the job private eye Holland March trying to poke out ugly truths from the seedier nooks and crannies of Los Angeles. Black's gloriously unhinged crime caper lets it rip without wasting minutes- we have March pitted with downbeat off-the-law enforcer Jackson Healy, played with disarming ease by a top-form Russel Crowe, as they try to locate a missing porn actress, shortly after one, named delectably as Misty Mountains, is bumped off.
There we have it- a textbook California noir template, harnessed effectively by master filmmakers into memorable films. There are corpses, there are fast cars, meanies with guns, seductive femme fatales and the real kingpins concealed out of sight, as we follow our two less-than-ideal dogged investigators uncovering a hornet's nest of scandal and conspiracy. There is a touch of 'Chinatown' in 'The Nice Guys'- the water shortage politics of that Roman Polanski masterpiece are here recycled as an important parallel subplot of air pollution levels on the rise due to more Cadillacs on the streets (one fascinating scene has gas-masked activists playing dead) and the stoned-out tenor of the film's outrageous comedy is a blend of Paul Thomas Anderson's both 'Boogie Nights' and 'Inherent Vice'. But this film is admirably and lovably lighter than all these, crucially as it is armed with that dazzling Black element, so rare in films these days- a heady dose of bouncy spunk.
This is a film, as its title suggests, about mismatched cops, or rather wannabe cops, trying to unravel a tangled mess of murder and seedy crime and ending up like real buddies, sparking off in a chemistry that makes even the unabashed silliness all around gushingly endearing. 'The Nice Guys' might be a 70s-style noir caper and it serves up all the glossy period detail in pomp and show, sure but it is closer in vein to one of those deliriously thrilling buddy cop actioners in the 80s. It is hardly surprising since Black was the one who penned 'Lethal Weapon'; if you go on a high watching those classic Riggs-Murtaugh escapades, you qualify for this too, gladly.
There are as much spills as much thrills in the film, even as it often stays sophisticated enough by piling on enough crazily entertaining twists and turns to let us want to sneak beyond the alluringly zingy exterior of the film's milieu. Black has always offered a healthy dose of bang-up thrills but he has also stealthily, sneakily sniggered at the formula cliches and 'The Nice Guys' is no different. It has enough of an enthralling cocktail of all the elements of a typical crime caper- not to forget those charged bursts of gunplay in between- but it never ever stops having a ball of a time as well.
There are splendidly choreographed comic scenes in the film- I can't forget, for quite sometime, Gosling's March goofing up his investigator routine from time to time- (him trapped inside a toilet will send up the audiences in side-splitting chuckles)- that would feel out of place of a more serious film. Black and co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi balance the audacity of the film's excellent gags with the sharp irony of its banter. The fascinating cast of crooks and cops gets to trade excellently timed, foul-mouthed wisecracks faster than the bullets that fly around. At the same time, there is an unexpected tenderness to the proceedings, mostly because of Healy's straightup diligence to his task. It is this oddly entertaining mix of the sweet and the silly that makes even the more questionable decisions of the plot as masterstrokes of unabashed nonsense.
The cast is reliably excellent all around and special mention should go to the fabulous ladies who come in all ages. Angourie Rice, playing March's doe-eyed yet bright daughter, lends an unlikely helping hand to the private-eye misadventures of the central pair while Yaya DaCosta's deceptive Tally looks in one scene as killer as Pam Grier in one of her Blaxploitation classics. Kim Basinger has a stellar cameo as a shifty head of justice at the helm of this maze of a game and Margaret Qualley as Amelia captures all the wide-eyed bewilderment of a really rookie porn actress in a film, 'where the plot is the point'.
There is no matching the charismatic duo and both Crowe and Gosling are in terrific, swashbuckling form as they go on, hitting a dynamic that drives all great buddy movies like this. Individually, Crowe is reliably great in his world-weary, dogged essence of a doughy version of Martin Riggs with a hidden core of mushy warmth. But with no disrespect to others, this is Gosling's film, totally. He is an utter revelation as an out-of-his-league yet endlessly charming character and he makes both his calm, blazing wisecracks as well as the hilarious gags work spectacularly.
'The Nice Guys' is classic Shane Black-style entertainment served in a funky 70s glass, happily drunk on the glossy colors of the era and capturing details, both big and small with brassy style. Master lensman Philippe Rousselot captures both the sweeping Cadillac fenders as well as the long side-burns and Afros with true mastery while the Black-isms are endlessly inventive (March insists in the end that people were not hurt because they died quickly). Like last year's 'The Man From UNCLE', this is one of those saucy nostalgia trips that stays so enjoyably nutty in its own witty and whimsical way. Watch it best through 'glasses made from Coke bottles' and be ready to be rocked and rolled.
My Rating- 4 Stars Out Of 5
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