"The Nice Guys" (2016)

As a massive Shane Black fan, this movie is crushing. And I defended “The Last Boy Scout.” Warner Bros. seems to be getting his dreck as Marvel uses him as a gun for hire to fool Warner to believe he can direct. He can’t. This movie is an absolute mess. I am certain Black can’t possibly be proud of this movie. It’s awful.

Sure, thank you kindly for the repeat shots of porn star tits. Or, the debaucherous scumbag references of Los Angeles, but aside from all that, it just is too silly to even be interesting.

The year is 1977, and we are deep into a plot about a thug-for-hire Russell Crowe and a sad-sack gumshoe (Ryan Gosling) with a daughter. There’s some tragic story there about the mother’s absence, but it is strangely played for laughs. As is Russell Crowe’s backstory. There is none. He seems to be a good guy who wants to do good, but sees the world as awful. Presumably a recovering drunk, he hires Gosling’s P.I. to track down a girl gone missing. Sound familiar? Yep, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” follows the template. Except here, it’s really ugly and not very fun.

The story takes odd turns, leads come up dead…and the wise-cracking timing is off somehow. There are good moments, but that’s all there is. There are the moments of endearment. Dad jokes type endearing, where you feel it’s been told to Black by a drunken molest-y uncle or something. It’s silly stuff you see in every movie he writes. Everything just seemed so misplaced. The action didn’t even seem all that thrilling. And the fight sequences are clunky. Save for punch sounds, you wouldn’t know if anyone even got hit. And the teen daughter in the world of porn in the 70’s is really odd. Odd that it probably seemed more natural in a movie like “Boogie Nights” but for Gosling’s kid, she was suppose to seem precocious, ended up being a lot more unnerving.

The movie is also shot digitally. Film negative would’ve added so much more to the mood of the movie. And you can tell how much they were fighting with the modernized look of digital with the analog look of film. The setting just looked..plastic and flat. There wasn’t that aged feel, even though they had “aged” film in the movie itself.

If you’re going for a plot, there is none. ¾ through the movie you’re actually really confused as to what they are suppose to be doing. Never fear, someone comes into push the story forward. It happens too many times that you wonder if luck doesn’t play a role in their work. They’re not good detectives or muscle, they’re just passive bystanders waiting for someone to tell them their next move. TERRIBLE mistake.

I get that the studios probably thought “we can’t pass on the guy who wrote ‘Lethal Weapon.’” That is close to 30 years old. Wow, what a difference Black is going through. He’s lost so much more when he started directing. Weird, since it seems most people figure out how to directed by writing. This movie stinks bad. Sorry…it just does.