'Nice Guys' - Not so nice guys...

I like writer/director Shane Black, I really do. He has written some very good films, including the first 'Lethal Weapon' and the often maligned, but fantastic 'Long Kiss Goodnight' to directing & writing 'Iron Man 3', 'Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang' (another fantastic one) and others. To be sure, he has had some bombs too, does anyone remember 'The Last Action Hero'? I am sure Black wants to forget that dud.  'Nice Guys', Shane Black's latest as a screenwriter/director, falls somewhere between his fantastic films and duds.

Starring Ryan Gosling as Holland March, an alcoholic private investigator and Russell Crowe as Jackson Healy, an aging enforcer who has sunk so low he is forced to take work from little girls tormented by little boys; the 'Nice Guys' is classic Shane Black neo-noir genre 70's buddy action flick. Gosling and Crowe have a great chemistry and it is this chemistry that often saves the film from pure ridiculous.

The 'Nice Guys' starts as any good noir tale would with a narrative from Healy complaining about the ills of the 70's and how things have changed. He is joined in the narrative by March, a former LA Police Detective now a private investigator working out of greed more than anything else. The two are teamed up to find a missing girl who was last seen in a recent porno movie. Tagging along is March's daughter Holly (Angourie Rice), a completely unneeded character. A 70s, drug-fueled mystery unfolds complete with big haired femme fatales, conspiracies, tragic downfalls and everything else you'd expect from a noir. Stir in some classic Shane Black buddy cop banter (Black's other genre strong suit) and you've almost got a pretty entertaining film.

I say almost simply because there is a lot to try and understand in this film. Black goes through a lot of effort trying to unpack the noir genre, so much so that the plot suffers and despite the fantastic efforts of Gosling & Crowe, the plot twists are cheap and the mystery simply services the themes of the film rather than the plot.

I really do hope there is a follow-up in the future; Crowe and Gosling deserve another shot. The 70's noir is a perfect setting for Black and given more time to develop the plot, it could have a promising future. At one point, this story was considered for an HBO series, a medium that I think could have done a better job at developing the story on a longer term basis.  Here, it is simply too short of a time to really appreciate the setting for what it is. While it is a solid 'C+' effort for Shane Black, it's definitely a 'B+' for Gosling and Crowe. For that, it is a movie worth seeing.