Look, kids. This is what summer blockbusters used to look like. I like Captain America movies as much as the next guy, but this is the film I was most hyped to see this year. If you’re wondering how Shane Black’s latest buddy action film stacks up to his previous underrated classic, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, I’ll save you the suspense: it’s probably even better.
The Nice Guys was supposed to open later this year, but Warner Bros. moved it forward to give its original date to Central Intelligence, which appears to be another soulless comedy for Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. Now The Nice Guys is opening against Neighbors 2 and The Angry Birds Movie, further proof that studio executives have no fucking clue what they’re doing. In promos, you can tell producer Joel Silver and the cast of the film are understandably bitter about the idiotic scheduling.
Ryan Gosling plays Holland March, a shitty private detective who has rare bouts of intuition. Like Saul Goodman, his client list consists of confused elderly people. Russell Crowe plays Jackson Healy, a guy who beats people up for money and he’s just been hired to kick Holland’s ass. Soon they’ll discover they have overlapping cases, at which point they team up and scour 1970s Los Angeles for leads. Holland’s impressionable young daughter, who’s at least a little smarter than her dad, tags along for the ride. She’s not incidental to the plot, either.
My favorite supporting characters are Keith David and Beau Knapp’s henchmen. These nuts would have stolen the show if not for the perfectly cast leads. David is just one of those guys I love seeing in movies and his presence here makes it all the more legitimate as a throwback film. Knapp, who I’m not entirely familiar with, plays a presumably coked-up idiot who has a hilariously evil laugh.
Gosling and Crowe make a brilliant team. I really miss the mid-budget action-comedy. This is exactly what going to the movie theater was like when I was kid.
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