THE NICE GUYS B-
USA (116 mi) 2016
‘Scope d: Shane Black
With a tribute to Isaac Hayes and the long intro of the
musical theme from SHAFT (1971), the film opens in a soulful groove of Norman
Whitfield’s incredible musical arrangement of Papa Was A
Rolling Stone (UNCUT) - The Temptations - HQ (12:04), one of the more
recognizable intros, featuring the kind of extended psychedelic arrangement
that takes you back to a distinctive place and time, that existed in a brief
window of time before it was extinguished.
What follows is an introductory prologue that sets the scene of pure
lunacy, a kind of adolescent porn fantasy that springs to life when a kid in
his pajamas steals his dad’s porn magazine and eagerly examines the merchandise
before a car comes tumbling down a hill straight through the house before
coming to a stop nearby. The kid checks
out the accident scene where a well-endowed, completely naked porn star named
Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio) is laying on the hood of the car, who is, in
fact, the exact same centerfold he was just examining. Covering her with his pajama top, she murmurs
a weird expression just before she dies, “How do you like my car, big boy?” Set in a pastel, candy-colored universe of
Los Angeles in 1977, the film is a comic spoof, a throwback to the noirish
detective stories driven by pulp fiction writers, though in this case, two
unlikely private eyes team up on a case of common interest, though they loathe
each other, with both teetering on the edge of sleaze and moral depravity
themselves, where they’re actually a couple of numbskulls that find themselves
using screwball comedy dialogue while searching for the elusive bad guys
through the stench of regular smog alerts, professional hit men, and layers of
entrenched corruption at the Justice Department. Basically a showcase for the acting skills of
Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, both wearing Hawaiian or paisley shirts with
leisure suits, we witness the hard edge of a somewhat overweight Crowe as Jackson
Healy, who narrates his opening scene, where his specialty as a heavy is roughing
people up for a living, sending a message of warning that they should stay away
from certain individuals unless they wish to receive another house call. Paralleling his introduction, Gosling as the
goofy, mentally challenged Holland March agrees to take the case of an elderly
woman reporting a missing husband, who hasn’t been seen since the funeral, though
an urn with his name attached is sitting on the mantle.
Shortly after the car accident, March is approached by Mrs.
Glenn (Lois Smith), the nearly blind aunt of the recently deceased Misty
Mountains, who insists she saw her niece several days after her reported death
alongside her friend Amelia (Margaret Qualley), but they vanished before she
could pursue them. Skeptical of her
claim, though curious about her sidekick, March agrees to take the case, though
he’s pretty sure he can verify a dead body.
Simultaneously, a young girl (Amelia) is seen chatting with Healy, claiming
some guy has been getting too close to her, and before you know it, Healy
arrives on the front door of March, giving him the standard treatment before
grabbing one of his arms and instructing him, “When you talk to your doctor,
tell him you have a spiral fracture of the left radius.” Later that evening, a couple of mob guys,
Blue Face (Beau Knapp) and his older partner Keith David, are lying in wait for
Healy, with the duo also looking for Amelia, turning into a raucous skirmish of
heavy blows before Healy finds a hidden shotgun and sends them fleeing. Finding himself back at March’s front door, March,
now wearing a cast, is not exactly happy to see him, where his precocious
thirteen year old daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) acknowledges, “Isn’t that the
guy that beat you up, Dad?” Making
amends at a local diner, they try to figure out their situation of finding
Amelia before the mob does, where Holly reveals her personal misgivings about
her father’s working methods, as he routinely swindles his clients out of extra
days, claiming he’s onto something even as he has nothing to show for it. Both these guys are scumbags of the lowest
order, yet their appeal is their humorous back and forth banter, where they’re fuck
ups even when they try to do good, yet Holly, bright and intelligent, is easily
the best thing in the film, actually showing them up throughout the film, and turns
out to be the voice of conscious for both of them, continually sticking her
nose in their business, despite her Dad pushing her out of the way. What
they discover is Amelia was working with Misty Mountains on an experimental
porn film called How Do You Like My Car,
Big Boy? The filmmaker named Dean,
along with Misty, both turn up dead, with Dean mysteriously dying in a house fire,
while the producer, Sid Shattack, is having a glamorous Hollywood party where
all interested forces converge.
Decorated in costume glitter with all manner of Hollywood
weirdos and perverts, they fit right in, weaving in and out of the opulence of
the party, with March taking full advantage of the free drinks, pretty much
getting plastered, literally stumbling upon the dead body of Shattack while
Holly is the one that actually discovers Amelia, but falls into the hands of
the killers as well, who are also there trying to kill Amelia while
acknowledging a hit man named John-Boy (Matt Bomer) has been hired to eliminate
any and all witnesses. It gets a bit
convoluted and ridiculous at the same time, including murders and miraculous
escapes, especially when a sharply dressed black woman Tally (Yaya DaCosta)
arrives on the scene and our tag team of private eyes are suddenly directed
into the offices of a high ranking official in the Justice Department, none
other than Kim Basinger as Judith Kutner, Amelia’s mother, (remember Basinger
worked so well together with Russell Crowe in his 1997 breakout movie, LA
CONFIDENTIAL), who claims her daughter is so delusional and paranoid that she
thinks her own mother is out to kill her, asking for their help in returning
her back home safely, as otherwise she’s falling into the hands of the Las
Vegas mob as they attempt to expand their pornography ring into Los
Angeles. It only grows more ludicrous,
where there are shootouts at an airport hotel and a miraculous discovery of
Amelia, who reveals to them that it’s the film they’re after, as it exposes all
the precious little secrets about a corporate exposé involving the Detroit auto
industry, air pollution, and their collusion to suppress the supposed
effectiveness of a bogus catalytic converter that regulates exhaust
emissions. In disbelief, March inquires,
“So let me get this straight: You made a
porn movie in which the point was the plot?”
With Detroit behind all the evil machinations, where better to promote
their product than the high rollers and corporate executives attending the Los
Angeles Auto Show? With the porn and
auto industries blending into one, with dueling party sequences along with
slogans like “What’s good for Detroit is good for America,” a manic hit man on
the loose, and a mafia-like conspiracy theory suppressing the truth, it’s only
fitting that everyone’s trying to get their hands on that little porn film
which will expose the truth. As
preposterous as it sounds, it all leads to a giant shoot ‘em up sequence, where
a decent comedy is infiltrated by excessive violence that feels obligatory and
necessary for an American audience, where it remains contrived and cartoonish
throughout, like something that exists only in the movies, bearing little
resemblance to reality, yet has become so commonly accepted in the movie world where
we’ve simply gotten used to vulgar, overglossed Hollywood fabrications, the
bigger the better (Trump, anyone?), where most have grown numb to it after a
while, but the point remains it’s completely unnecessary in a movie like this
that is so character driven, as the heightened levels of humor are the real
story, but somehow the intimacy gets lost in the hyperbolic exaggerations.
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