The Nice Guys by Shane Black (2016)
Shane Black sure does love making movies about unlikely duos who are forced together under wild circumstances and must fight their way out, tooth and nail, against shadowy conspiracies and seemingly untouchable elites. 2016’s The Nice Guys follows in the footsteps of earlier Black films like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Its story about a sad-sack P.I. (Ryan Gosling) and a brutal-but-idealistic enforcer (Russell Crowe) searching for a young woman and traversing both the seedy underbelly of 1977-era Los Angeles and the highest levels of the American government certainly checks all of the right boxes. However, it lacks a certain misanthropic glee that makes Black’s other films so entertaining. That’s not for any lack of trying, though. Gosling, in particular, goes for broke as Holland March, aka, the world’s worst detective, and he and Crowe certainly have some nice chemistry. But The Nice Guys ultimately feels more like a film made by someone trying to copy Shane Black’s style, than an actual Shane Black film. For my money, I’d just stick with The Last Boy Scout or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
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