Review of The Nice Guys (2016) by Colginator — 09 Jun 2016

On a basic level The Nice Guys works like any buddy cop movie. Great action, well developed characters and a decent story to hold it altogether. But just like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the real strength of The Nice Guys is how Shane Black is able to both mock the clichés in the action genre, many of which he helped to create in films like Lethal Weapon, whilst paying homage to all the action tropes that made the genre what it is today.

Russell Crowe plays Jackson Healey, a tough enforcer whose work mostly includes freelance work of beating up someone for whoever’s willing to pay. He has considered becoming a licenced private investigator, as he wants to give real help to some clients, but he doesn’t want to pay for the licence. He’s a nice guy, but he’s not that Nice. Then there’s Ryan Gosling as Holland March, who is a licenced investigator and father to a thirteen year old girl. He spends most of his time accepting cases from old people with dementia paying him to find their recently deceased spouses, constantly screwing up and spending most of his time trying to drown himself in Bourbon. Even his daughter calls him a bad person.

After one old lady with bad eyesight hires him to find her niece, who is a porn star who had recently died in a car crash. Thinking the job is easy money to just confirm the girl is dead, March takes the case. But he quickly discovers the girl could be alive. This causes him to cross paths with Healey, who is hired to burst in to March’s home to threaten him and get him to drop the case. Before leaving he casually asks March a few questions about his life as a private investigator and how he’s able to afford such a nice place on an investigators salary, before calmly breaking his wrist and leaving. It’s a good tone setter for their relationship for the rest of the film.

But Healey quickly realises the case was bigger than he thought it was and wanting to be a “nice guy” decides to work with March and solve the case. Very quickly they fall in to a case filled with 70’s pornography and government conspiracies. It’s part Boogie Nights, part Chinatown and all tied together with Shane Blacks tongue and cheek charm.

Similar to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, one of the films greatest strengths comes from the charismatic leads of Crowe and Gosling as the mismatched duo investigating the case. Crowe delivers all his lines in a great deadpan style, whilst Gosling goes out of his usual element, giving up his usual macho man image in order to play a Buster Keaton style slapstick performance. Sometimes they seem like the smartest guys in the room, chasing obscure leads and coming up with good results. Then at other’s they seem like a pair of idiots getting by on pure luck alone, such as one scene where Gosling accidentally stumbles down a hill and ends up discovering a dead body. They are both screw ups, but they screw up in such charming ways that we can’t help but to continue rooting for them.

The film is also able to avoid the annoying cliché used in films like War of the Worlds or Commando where the child ends up serving no role in the film other than being a victim and a plot device. Instead March’s daughter is written with the same charm and depth as both March and Healey. Angourie Rice also pulls of a great performance working very well with all the other actors in the film.

Shane Black both wrote and directed the film and he definitely plays to all of his greatest strengths through the films mixture of great comedic timing and sharp dialogue. He also works in all the clichés that you’d expect from his work, even managing to fit in one scene at the end randomly set at Christmas (since it just wouldn’t be a Shane Black film without a little festivity). Ultimately it’s a film that keeps you laughing throughout and by the end it leaves you wanting more.