MAY 23, 2016
To put it simply, “The Nice Guys” is a blast.
The filmmakers had me in the first 10 seconds, when the oh-so-hip Warner Bros. logo of 1977 and the wonka-wonka beat of The Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” filled the screen. “The Nice Guys” takes place in the Los Angeles of 1977, when billboards for “Jaws 2” and “Airport ’77 were everywhere along the Sunset Strip.
Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is basically a thug-for-hire, cashing a check to beat ne’er-do-wells senseless with his brass knuckles. Hey, it’s a living. One of his victims is shady private detective Holland March (Ryan Gosling), who is fleecing the elderly Mrs. Glenn (the brilliant stage actress Lois Smith) who claims that she saw her niece, the porn actress Misty Mountains, through a window two days after she was declared dead.
After breaking March’s arm, Healy checks out the private eye’s credentials and finds that March may be someone with whom he’d like to work. He’s been hired to find Amelia (Margaret Qualley), the daughter of Judith Kutner (Kim Basinger), a Department of Justice official who says she simply wants her daughter back. Amelia was involved in a porn movie that starred the buxom Misty, and both Misty and the film’s director have been found dead, and Judith is afraid her daughter may be next.
That’s all the plot you really need to know. As happens so often in film noir stories, the script is simply the pretext for what the film is really about, and in “The Nice Guys,” the most important element is the chemistry between its stars. Crowe, the burly Oscar-winning action star and Gosling, the suave romantic heartthrob, are not the first names you’d associate with cinematic belly-laughs, and pairing them together to star in a big-budget action comedy sounds like it would be absolutely insane. It’s also pretty brilliant.
Crowe, whose career high point was in the early 2000s, has been on a downward slide recently, and really needing this role to hit, he makes the most of it. Crowe gained a substantial amount of weight for the role, and he really comes across as a lug in a blue leather jacket, a perfect contrast to Gosling’s sleek, slim doofus. Crowe’s weird American accent, which seems like it comes from the middle of nowhere, is actually kind of fun after awhile, and even while playing the straight man in the comedy team, Crowe earns a lot of big laughs. Who knew that Russell Crowe could be funny? It’s his best work in ages.
Gosling is a revelation in this. Most famous for his romantic roles, he did show a little flair for comedy in 2011’s “Crazy, Stupid. Love,” but that doesn’t nearly prepare you for the comic chops he shows here. There’s a bit of business he has on the toilet where he tries to threaten Crowe with a gun, but he can’t keep the toilet stall door open so he has to keep kicking it with his foot and it never works. It’s a brilliant bit of comic choreography and typical of what I think is a career high for Gosling.
As great as the leads are, the film’s best performance is that of 14 year-old Australian actress Angourie Rice, who plays Holly, March’s pre-teen daughter who always seems to be 10 steps ahead of her father, whom she calls “the world’s worst detective.” Rice has a real ease onscreen, rare for someone so young and reminded me of the breakthrough performance of Jodie Foster in 1976’s “Taxi Driver.” Rice is that good, and if she wants it, she has a huge future ahead of her.
Unfortunately, the film’s other main performances are not that great. Matt Bomer, a terrific actor who won a Golden Globe for his performance in Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart,” has to hide behind leather gloves and a machine gun as the film’s main villain, John-Boy. (There is an unfortunate motif of “The Waltons” running through the film.) And Kim Basinger, who won an Oscar as Crowe’s co-star in “L.A. Confidential,” is totally waxy as the missing girl’s mother.
But “The Nice Guys” marks a career comeback for director Shane Black, who owned the action comedy franchise in the 1980s. After graduating from film school, Black wrote a little script called “Lethal Weapon” in six weeks’ time and went on to write such genre staples as “The Last Boy Scout” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” as well as writing and directing 2005’s underrated “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” His successful direction of “Iron Man 3” was his ticket to directing and co-writing (with Anthony Bagarozzi) “The Nice Guys,” and it’s nice to have his brand of smart-ass tough-guys back again.
OK, “The Nice Guys” may not be a player in next year’s Oscars, but I have to say, I haven’t laughed as much at the movies in months as I did seeing “The Nice Guys,” and that’s worth something.
GRADE: B+
