Review of Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) (2001) by Veronique K — 11 Dec 2011

Kiss kiss, bang bang is a postmodern homage to raymond chandler's hard-boiled fictions through the several-day sequences within the movie: trouble is my business, the simple art of murder, lady in the lake, and the little sister. each sequence is a parody of randler's novel, wrily appropriated into the contemporary standard of spunky spice, heavier dosages of snickering cynicism. meanwhile the idea of chandler-esque hard-boiled detective is an americanized, proletariat(populist) kind of anti-sherlock-homles-elite type of hero (=american ordinary joe) who solves the cases with his flawed human endeavours instead of her overman wits. it's a style driven by psychological developments of our anti-hero protagonist...in other words, what distinguishes american hard-boiled from continental detective is its phallic swaggeries, which means philip marlowe or sam spade excels with the package of his supreme machismo = strength, bravery and grits.

In a brief, classic hard-boiled is all about: 1. narrative: linear causation. 2. macho wisecracking detective who is not an elite. 3. the corrupted metropolitan: los angeles or new york.

Ok, my point of making efforts to introduce the framework of principles within this genre is to manifest the stark subversion of postmodernized "kiss kiss, bang bang," which overthrows those basic principles as los angeles is no longer what it used to be in the days of raymond chandler. kiss kiss, bang bang features a gay detective, and there're moments when val kilmer and robert downey jr. are compelled to kiss each other to escape the gangster or police surveillance. in one moment, robert downey's finger is accidentally chopped off by the leading woman. (symbolic castration)...thus, there's no phallic swaggery in the men here and it doesn't celebrate the magnitude of machismo as it did in the good old days. even at the last moment, robert's downey's retro-80s stunts of bravery feel like a mockery of manhood, and it's like saying "now you finally get it on, hard and firm(hm, a depiction of phallic state..ha) to save the day while being limp for the most of the show"...in one perspective of genders within postmodern detective fiction is the nullification of the overpower of straight white male by yielding the spotlight to the queer, the effeminated, the woman, any marginalized gender since the course of modernity is a cheer of masculine heroism, which is to be smeared in the realm of postmodernity. for example, the girl with the dragon tattoo.

Kiss kiss, bang bang does parodies on chandler's novels without following the menchanism of linear causation as the timing of its narrative is shattered while robert downey fails to deliver his story-telling in a neat, coherent way. but who says we don't love such fragmentation? kiss kiss, bang bang has a smashed-off narration which just resembles the nowaday los angeles, whose rots and tumults are catalyzed in a much much more accelerated pace, which cannot be emulated by the knack of nostalgia.