Movie Review: 'The Nice Guys'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- They may or may not be nice guys, but they surely seem headed for finishing last.
They're the central duo in The Nice Guys, and they're played by two talented actors, Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, who are trapped in a wrongheaded movie.
The Nice Guys is a hard-edged, noirish, thoroughly cynical romp-and-stomp thriller with a sense of humor that we wish it would display much more extensively.
What we get instead is relentless, over-the-top action and violence and a missed opportunity to entertain.
The Nice Guys infuriates.
Why? Because all the shoot-em-up stuff strangles the comedic thrust right out of existence. And because by the time the off-putting script has resorted to the laziest, most morally offensive maneuver in the book – a child in life-or-death jeopardy – for a fifth time, we're ready to close our eyes and throw in the towel.
The premise: in the process of investigating the death of a porn star in 1977 Los Angeles, a pair of hapless private eyes unearth a shocking criminal conspiracy.
Gosling plays a clumsy and tipsy down-on-his-luck-and-we-think-we-know-why detective named Holland March, one step removed from being a con artist; the latter is a private eye as well but also a tough-guy enforcer-for-hire named Jackson Healy, who essentially breaks people's arms for a living
March and Healy are hired to find the missing daughter of a Department of Justice agent played by Kim Basinger (who teamed so memorably with Crowe in L.A. Confidential, winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in the bargain) but they find – that is, don't find -- a lot more than that.
Especially good at their jobs, however, they are decidedly not, as they employ a confrontational technique that can only be described as bad cop/ bad cop.
The co-writer (with Anthony Bagarozzi) and director of this comedic, muscular mystery-thriller buddy flick is Shane Black, who wrote a couple Lethal Weapon flicks, not exactly inventing but certainly establishing the buddy-cop genre, before turning to directing.
This is his third time in the director's chair, following his major stumble on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2005 and then his triumphant directorial reinvention on the marvelous sequel, Iron Man 3, in 2013.
But Black's penchant for nasty violence and a callousness about the preciousness of life, which was certainly the case in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, makes this big-bang-bang outing seem a step backward after Iron Man 3.
The Nice Guys, which was earlier proposed as a television series, was then refitted for the movie screen and a name cast – Crowe an Oscar-winning Best Actor for Gladiator in 2000, one of his three nominations, and Gosling a nominee for Best Actor for 2006's Half Nelson.
And, boy, could Ryan Gosling, who even shows off his Lou Costello impression, have and offer a great comedy time if only the script would let him. It's not as if he has never played comedy before (he was in Crazy, Stupid, Love), but it's been a rare occurrence and he seems to have been let out of drama jail.
Crowe has done little in the way of comedy as well.
So this isn't Lemmon and Matthau or Ferrell and Hart we're watching.
But these two could comprise a nifty comedy team – with Crowe as the straight man -- if they didn't have to spend so much time ducking from bullets.
This film's stock-in-trade should have been the bantering relationship between them. But, sadly, the dependence on spraying automatic weapons and the threats aimed at March's 13-year-old daughter (played by the assured Angourie Rice) takes precedence.
We'll see if this warped misfire nonetheless kicks off a franchise, which would appear to be the intent.
That is, if the target audience has enjoyed the early footage enough to forgive the film's throwaway plot and idiotic conclusion, featuring a dreadful final half-hour that is the movie equivalent of a nervous breakdown.
As for us, we'll track down 2 stars out of 4 for the underachieving buddy-sleuth thriller, The Nice Guys. Capsule review: Not so nice, guys.
