Review of The Nice Guys (2016) by Thatreviewguy — 15 Jun 2016

"Look on the bright side, nobody got hurt.".

Breaking through the door of the already crowded room that is that of police dramas, The Nice Guys brings an innovative mix of comedy, tension and sheer absurdity.

Director Shane Black's last work stands out for it's brilliant dialogues, surreal recourse to slapstick humor and general depiction of death, and a new way of representing the development of relationships between characters, breaking the bilateral paradigm that we have seen maybe one too many times in recent cinematic history: on one side we have the corny mix of an effective character that always gets the job done and an inept, unpractical character that seems more like a hassle than an actual aid, but who in the end discovers his potential and fundamentally helps in solving the main problem; on the other side, we have a team of equally able individuals who all use their traits in an overly serious way, only to end up meeting their match in the antagonist and having to step up their game. The Nice Guys, on the other hand, depicts a situation in which all of the characters, in the solving of the dilemma, end up living with their ups and downs, never ending in a pathetic internal debate that would stop the movie dead in it's tracks. They always move on and never try and change their way of action, and they make the best, or the least worst, out of it. This makes the characters keep themselves, and keep focus on the actual task at hand, even in the moments in which the film gives some more details on the lives of our to unconventional heroes.

This, along with the constant undertone of ridiculousness, expressed by the over-the-top references to sex (and more specifically to pornography, which plays a fundamental role in the plot), the constant, seemingly random deaths and acts of violence, scattered throughout the movie at any possible chance, makes "The Nice Guys" a brilliant addition to the list of "best films of 2016".