Saturday 11 June 2016

The Nice Guys movie review

dir. by Shane Black
Shane Black's third directorial effort, following cult hit Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and blockbuster Iron Man 3, and his first not starring Robert Downey Jr., built up a wave of anticipation off the backs of a few very promising trailers. The duo of Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, alongside an irreverent tone, immediately sold The Nice Guys as a delightful action-comedy for the summer season. While the film certainly has its fair share of humour and charm, and while it gets more entertaining as it goes on, its jokes are disappointingly uneven, and a frustratingly high number of elements in the film aren't fully realised, up to and including its lead characters.



Holland March (Gosling) is a private investigator currently looking into the disappearance of one Amelia Kuttner (Margaret Qualley) while hired to find a deceased porn actress. In the process, he's visited by an enforcer by the name of Jackson Healy (Crowe), who beats him up and convinces him to drop the case. Later, Healy is attacked by two men who are looking for Amelia. Worried about her safety (and his job security), he seeks out March, and the two team up to find Amelia and warn her.

The film's extended first act is easily its weakest point, because it's where the pacing is the slowest and, as a result, it's where the film's weaknesses shine through the most clearly. The most significant of these is the inconsistent quality of the gags. Although many do genuinely work, far too many fall flat. The percentage of gags which doesn't work does slowly decrease as the film goes on, becoming fairly low by the end, but never is the film rid of jokes which simply do not land. The film's best jokes take advantage of the characters' personalities while also showcasing genuinely clever writing. At its best, The Nice Guys creates some genuinely inventive characters and situations that are genuinely funny. It's unfortunate that not all of the film reaches that level.

The film's uneven quality is due in part to an abundance of subpar filler. On top of numerous overlong gags, there are several weak gags which are only there to pad out a scene, and a lot of scenes which are dragged out unnecessarily, seemingly just to fill time. The Nice Guys is chock full of pacing issues, its overstuffed scenes at times focusing so long on irrelevant events as to feel tangential, and many of its gags spinning their wheels long after the joke should have ended. Few scenes don't eventually go somewhere important, and a few of the overstretched jokes do stay somewhat funny, but the film is disappointingly inconsistent from start to finish.

Narratively, The Nice Guys boasts an intricate mystery full of twists and turns, but rarely is it unpredictable, and most of its thematic ideas are woefully underdeveloped. Early on, Healy monologues about the state of children today, and later it appears that the film intends to contradict this initially condescending tone. However, a few scenes after March's daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) enters the story, this idea comes to a halt. Similarly, the film has ideas about morality and politics which complement the occasional noir style that is present in many parts of the film. However, these two remain on the surface level, and even the noir window dressing never forms a cohesive atmosphere.

Both Gosling and Crowe do a solid job of selling their characters, and in both Healy and March is a solid base for an entertaining character. Healy is your average paid killer who becomes conflicted about the morality of his actions, and although there's relatively little to him, Crowe's performance sells him wonderfully. Healy, meanwhile, is a bit deeper, with the implication of significant psychological issues after his wife died in a house fire, as well as a habit of alcoholism. The film never quite figures out whether to make him an idiot or actually really clever, but his less intelligent moments strike an amusing contrast with his surprising competence as a detective.

Unfortunately, neither character is explored as much as they could be. March's issues are ultimately irrelevant, and his past is glossed over and then never mentioned again. Meanwhile, Healy is completely inscrutable, never getting much development beyond the underdeveloped moral question brought by his line of work. In addition, neither offers a particularly exciting twist on their base archetypes of the goofy drunken cop and the gruff killer. The two of them are ultimately far less interesting than Amelia or Holly. Rice, in particular, does a phenomenal job as Holly, who is easily the film's best character, frequently being more competent than the leads and feeling like her quirks and characterization are fully realized. Beyond her and the main duo, all other characters are one-dimensional and mostly just serve the purposes of the plot or aesthetic.

Visually, The Nice Guys is frequently excellent. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot creates some phenomenal images, which at their best give the film moments of noirish atmosphere, and which contribute to the film's consistently solid action. Director Shane Black has a knack for this stuff, and the action is always thrilling and the film's most consistent pleasure. Each action scene is more frantic than the last, and every single one of them is lucid, exciting, and blended delightfully with comedy, especially in the film's lively final battle. Said final battle is the film at its very best, abandoning most of its pretenses and having a solid, if not perfect, hit-to-miss ratio for its gags.

The Nice Guys is an enjoyable summer film which unfortunately doesn't live up to its potential. Many of the pieces for the film to be genuinely great are already there, but a disappointing number of jokes fall flat, and the film does far less with its pieces than it could have. That the film is so close to being great is its most frustrating aspect, as only a little more focus would have really pushed it to the top. Instead, it's merely a good, very enjoyable film with a lot of squandered potential. Of course, that's far from the worst thing for a film to be, and The Nice Guys is perfectly easy to reccomend if you go in with the right expectations.

7/10

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