For the longest time, Shane Black was an underground auteur — an author of screenplays both beloved and reviled who wrote in a way that encompassed '40s noir, '70s shamble, '80s slick and '90s ultraviolence. His voice on screen drew from all of those things, yet spoke in a way that was distinctively his own. His success was celebrated, but a record payday for 1996's The Long Kiss Goodnight saw him sent into cinematic exile after that film's failure, and it seemed like he was going to become one of those beloved characters who never got back into the big leagues.
Then his friend Robert Downey Jr. helped rope him in to direct the second-biggest moneymaker of 2013, (right behind Frozen): Iron Man 3. And sometimes, the recursive habits of the global entertainment marketplace work for us as moviegoers rather than against us — bringing in more than a billion dollars worldwide will open a lot of previously closed doors. So Black was able to get a green light for his violent, vivacious and vicious buddy comedy set in 1977.
Kicked into gear by an unexpected car accident that claims the life of adult film star Misty Mountains, The Nice Guys is one of those shambling mysteries built around a conspiracy with tendrils that stretch from street-level protests through those amazing parties where Earth, Wind & Fire is playing and catwalks stretch across the pool, all the way up to the highest echelons of power ... the government? Oh yes. The adult film industry? Yep. The auto industry? Yes, even them.
The Los Angeles we see is a glorious, impossible cinematic space — a space, shot with HD cameras, that conflates a smog epidemic with digital matte shots in a way that keeps all barriers soft and malleable. The sensory disconnect between L.A. and Atlanta (where a surprising amount of the film was actually shot) echoes the way movies can become realer than real in our memory. The fact that a major subplot involves using film as an indelible piece of evidence — something physical that can't be wiped from existence — is no happy accident.
You can't help but compare The Nice Guys to Black's directorial debut, 2005's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, because the films share whip-crack tonal shifts and an archetypal universe of smart, hyper-verbal people who understand tropes and who daily navigate a contentious moral spectrum. There's no Christmas in the air this time, but a good assortment of '70s funk and yacht rock abounds.
Russell Crowe brings Wallace Beery realness to his "professional tough guy" Jackson Healy, a brick wall with wicked comic timing and an instinct for using strategically applied mayhem. This is Crowe having a blast, playing in the same sandbox as his disarmingly earthy turns in Man of Steel and The Man With the Iron Fists, liberated from the obligations of being an Oscar-winning movie star. Just as much fun as Crowe is Ryan Gosling, uncharacteristically manic and nervy. His Holland March is an intermittently perceptive P.I. and a day-drunk single dad, bounding through the film, wounded, as if he set out to do the exact opposite of his traditional cool, romantic-cipher performances. The two together are an unparalleled comic duo, equally suited for Samuel Beckett or Sears and Williams, and spending two hours in a theater watching them get to the bottom of an intriguing mystery is a joy.
The Nice Guys is a satisfying action film that values spatial clarity and deeply sick humor equally, and that's something audiences don't necessarily get during the big summer movie season. So maybe that's how Black really does maintain the Christmas milieu that pops up throughout his work — The Nice Guys is a gift.
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