The Nice Guys (MA). Director: Shane Black. Starring: Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, Angourie Rice, Kim Basinger, Yaya DaCosta, Margaret Qualley, Murielle Telio, Matt Bomer. 116 minutes
Shane Black didn't invent the buddy cop genre, but his script for 1987's Lethal Weapon did establish a durable template: hard-bitten tough guys who shroud vulnerability in hyper-machismo; unlikely partners who find friendship through shared endeavour; wisecracks keeping pace with the crack of gunfire and of fists against flesh. His debut as director for 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang saw Black both embrace and subvert the template, and he does so again in The Nice Guys.
The film is set in 1977 Los Angeles, where private investigator Holland March (Gosling) and local thug-for-hire Jackson Healy (Crowe) team up to find a missing girl, Amelia Kutner (Qualley). Amelia may hold the key to the recent mysterious death of a porn star named Misty Mountains (Telio). Beyond that however, following the anti-smog protester Amelia's trail leads Holland and Jackson into the midst of a conspiracy involving Detroit's Big Three car manufacturers.
The Nice Guys is entertaining; a distinctively LA, neo-noir pastiche, steeped in sleaze and prime-colour neon, which gains currency from its environmental theme, and is cut through with bombastic action and surreal flourishes: there's an underbelly figure who's listed in the credits only as 'Blue Face' (for reasons that are obvious if you've seen the film); also, a hitman named John Boy (Bomer) who bears a striking resemblance to the actor who played the character of that name on 1970s TV show The Waltons.
Gosling and Crowe meanwhile deliver, somewhat unexpectedly, a straight-faced, two-pronged comedic tour de force, with Gosling's physical comedy in particular being a standout. At the same time Holland and Jackson are men with complicated pasts and questionable morals who wear their world-weariness in every facial expression and gesture, even as the characters and plot verge on (and at times trip extravagantly into) the absurd. These are serious actors taking their funny roles seriously.
"Black, a mainstream filmmaker who is more self-aware than most, tries to have his cake and eat it too, by both drawing and subverting the male gaze."
Notwithstanding individual tastes that are by no means aligned with gender, this is the kind of movie that can tend to appeal to puerile male interests while diminishing respect for women. In this regard Black, a mainstream filmmaker who is more self-aware than most, tries to have his