It’s simply irresistible. Within minutes of the film starting, we’re hastingly acquainted with Russell Crowe’s Jackson Healy, a enforcer who feels detached from society and happiness despite it being L.A. in the late 1970s. Through him, we meet our second protagonist, Ryan Gosling’s Holland March, a PI who is an expert at getting paid double for his below-par work.
The plot is simple. March is investigating the death of porn actress Misty Mountains, and a lead he has is a girl called Emilia (played by Margaret Qualley, in what was probably the role that led to her being cast in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’). The problem is that she hired Healy to beat up March, in what is one of the funniest scenes of the whole film. After that Emilia goes missing, after it was discovered she was making an ‘experimental’ film to expose the truth that her mother is helping Detroit car companies to illegally cross the environmental boundaries, whilst the porn mob from Las Vegas attempt to move their industry into L.A. Got all of that?
To be absolutely honest, the plot is the least important thing about this movie. Its visuals are so vivid that they transport back you to the late seventies in a way that, again, Tarantino might have modelled of.
As the writer of the first two Lethal Weapon films and architect of the modern buddy cop genre, Black is an old hand at balancing brute force with quick wit – and his flair for gourmet trash is evident in every impossibly snappy exchange of repartee and fireball-belching shoot-out.
There’s something quite PT Anderson about this film, reminiscent of ‘Boogie Nights’, however its fair to say that this buddy-comedy is something that we haven’t truly seen since, well, Shane Black’s ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ back in 2005.
Crowe and Gosling are playing roles out of their usual typecast. Crowe, now in his mid-fifties, has fully embraced his middle-age possibilities of acting. Healy is very much all about the job, not wanting to delve into his past, despite reservations about his future.
March, meanwhile, is the perfect opposite. He has a loose-swaggering confidence that is infectiously funny, but it also renders him utterly useless at his job, yet somehow, he gets the job done.
In short, it’s ‘Starsky & Hutch’, but R-Rated – a classic odd couple match up. We finally get to see the full potentials of Gosling in a comedic role. Whether its his silent laughing upon the accidental discovery of a dead body, his comic fight scenes, or pretty much everything else, it’s hard not to say that in 2016, ‘The Nice Guys’ saw a better performance from Gosling than from ‘La La Land’.
Curated by Gunn himself is a beautifully chosen soundtrack of fifteen classics from the era, ranging from Al Green to Earth Wind & Fire, that will settle any reservations about the films plausibility and make you lean back and enjoy the 116 minute ride.
The whole film just begs for a sequel, which collates an impressively-long gag reel from the duo. Nevertheless, the classiness in Black’s writing does leave you with some sympathy for Healy and March, who you’ll both feel have been done over by the world, both losing their previous lives. It’s without one of my favourite guilty-pleasure films of all time, and deserves to be watched in these desperate times.
UKFILMS 