The Nice Guys

Joy is watch­ing Ryan Gosling roll back­wards down a hill in the dark. In Shane Black’s rol­lick­ing rough-and-tum­ble bud­dy movie, the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly unflap­pable Cana­di­an star is required to take a spill mul­ti­ple times, always at pre­cise­ly the most inop­por­tune – and thus hilar­i­ous – moment. He also barfs, bick­ers, shrieks, swears, weeps and falls down some more in a demand­ing phys­i­cal com­e­dy role that sees him give ​’90s Jim Car­rey a run for his mon­ey. But more of that later.

You often hear actors, when ques­tioned on their rea­sons for com­mit­ting to a giv­en project, reel off the same pat answer about how it’s all about the script. Well, this one by Black and Antho­ny Bagarozzi (who’s on co-screen­writ­ing duties for Black’s upcom­ing Doc Sav­age, as well as Adam Wingard’s Death Note) real­ly is a doozy. Fast, funky and furi­ous­ly enter­tain­ing, this is the sort of down and dirty pic­ture you can imag­ine top-rank­ing stu­dio execs froth­ing over back when Hol­ly­wood still pro­duced small­er, gen­uine­ly sub­ver­sive movies for main­stream audi­ences. You know, back when ​“reboot­ing” meant switch­ing your Com­modore 64 off and on and the wall and com­ic book movies invari­ably con­tained more Span­dex than CGI.

It’s not just the cos­tumes, the scuzzy ​’70s set­ting, the flaw­less soul-and-dis­co sound­track; in the best pos­si­ble way The Nice Guys actu­al­ly feels like it belongs in a dif­fer­ent era. Gosling’s eye­balls must have jumped out of their sock­ets – Tex Avery style – when the script land­ed in his in-tray. There’s just so much good stuff here, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to: method act­ing eco war­riors, a blue-faced assas­sin, Kim Basinger, sev­er­al stacks of shot-up corpses, two coy mer­maids and a giant talk­ing bee.

As ever with Black’s films, the jour­ney is more impor­tant than the des­ti­na­tion. The plot slams into gear when an actress known for cheap bon­go flicks (under an allit­er­at­ed, innu­en­do-laden alias, nat­u­ral­ly) turns up dead in sub­ur­ban Los Ange­les, appar­ent­ly the vic­tim of a freak car acci­dent. On the case are Jack­son Healy (Rus­sell Crowe) and Hol­land March (Gosling), a pair of low-rent pri­vate detec­tives who decide to team up when it tran­spires that the porn­star is in some way con­nect­ed to an elu­sive young woman named Amelia (Mar­garet Qual­ley). From here things get pro­gres­sive­ly stranger and stick­i­er for our sea­soned anti­heroes, and they quick­ly come to realise that solv­ing the ​“crime of the cen­tu­ry” is going to be about as straight­for­ward as shoot­ing invis­i­ble fish in a bot­tom­less barrel.

Just as he did with the Lethal Weapon series and his 2005 direc­to­r­i­al debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Black exploits his film’s mis­matched cen­tral dynam­ic to full com­ic and dra­mat­ic effect. Dry quips and put-downs abound. Occa­sion­al­ly Healy and March come to blows. In truth their con­stant spar­ring is by turns endear­ing and exhaust­ing. Yet while the jokey cama­raderie hits its mark for the most part – with Crowe at his bristly best and Gosling pin­balling about the place with pal­pa­ble rel­ish – the film would sim­ply fall apart were it not for the ground­ing pres­ence of anoth­er character.

Quite unex­pect­ed­ly, it’s rel­a­tive new­com­er Angourie Rice as March’s intre­pid daugh­ter, Hol­ly, who steals the show. Not only is she charm­ing and very fun­ny, but her com­par­a­tive matu­ri­ty reveals some­thing almost trag­ic about these hope­less­ly anti­quat­ed mas­cu­line arche­types. We laugh both at and with them and roll our eyes when their inep­ti­tude leads to far­ci­cal sce­nar­ios, but, cru­cial­ly, we empathise with them too.