by Peter Callaghan

It’s late. Donald Trump for President late. A Shaft-like soundtrack is getting on up, while a shaft-pumping teenager is getting on down to his parent’s bedroom to borrow a porno mag from underneath his dad’s side of the bed. But before he can unleash the beast, the featured artist from said publication – the buxom black beauty Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio) – careers off the highway, crashes her car through their home and lands tits up on their manicured lawn. Literally! With porno mag in hand, the gobsmacked teenager gingerly approaches his scantily clad idol who, with a trickle of blood running from her ruby red lips, seductively purrs the title of her latest film: “How do you like my car, big boy?” Her eyes glaze over, her pulse stills. He came, he saw, but he failed to bonk her!

No ordinary opening to no ordinary film by director Shane Black and his co-screenwriter Anthony Bagarozzi who continue the former’s trademark fascination with oddball pairings of private investigators and public liabilities such as: Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon; Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans in The Last Boy Scout; and Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jnr in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which marked Black’s directorial debut. Picking up the mantle as the eponymous Nice Guys are Ryan Gosling as the dippy detective Holland March who sports a “You will never be happy” tattoo on his forearm replete with an ironic smiley face and a heavy Russell Crowe as the heavy-for-hire Jackson Healey who has no job title and can’t be found in the Yellow Pages, but if you’re in trouble or if someone’s messing with your daughter, who are you going to call? Gross Busters!

Holland receives such a call from Amelia Kutner (Margaret Qualley), an environmentalist and strident anti-capitalist who has created a pornographic film with an ecological twist to highlight the harmful effects of car fuel emissions on the birds and bees. Nudge, nudge! Annoyed by the unwanted attention of Holland – who as well as searching for a man who was reported missing by his widow a day after his funeral and accidentally slashing his wrists while trying to surreptitiously break into a glass door, has been hired by Amelia’s aunt to track her down – she pays Jackson to “take care of him”. Shorthand for a lethal game of “shut up unless you are me” which consists of a rap on the knuckles to stop pestering her, a bout of arm twisting to make sure he’s got the message and a parting dose of medical advice: “When you’re talking to your doctor, just tell him you’ve got a spiral fracture of the left radius.”

But the oddest of odd couples are brought together in the most unlikely of circumstances when two thugs who go by the Ronseal-inspired names of Blue Face and Older Guy (Beau Knapp and Keith David, respectively) target Jackson for protecting Amelia. United in perplexity, they do a bit of digging around and unearth a few startling facts: Amelia was spotted in Misty Mountains’ apartment a couple of days after her death; several members of the production team behind her ecologically-themed pornographic film have been bumped off; and her mother Judith (Kim Basinger), who works for the Department of Justice and purports to be a fervent anti-pornography campaigner, has more skeletons in her closet than Burke and Hare.

What follows is a highly amusing cat and mouse chase where dog eats dog, a humongous bumble bee doubles as a backseat driver, Jackson charges about like a bull in a china shop, Holland plays the goat, his wise owl of a daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) keeps watch “and stuff” – and all to save the birds from the smog. Cryptic? Loony? Unpredictable? You bet! And highly enjoyable to boot! (“Dad! There’s like whores here and stuff,” says Holly after sneaking into a bar of ill-repute. To which he replies, “Sweetheart, how many times have I told you, don’t say ‘and stuff’. Just say, ‘Dad, there are whores here.’”) However, after an hour or so of zig-zagging plotlines and deliberately lame one-liners including a delightful homage to Airplane (“Thanks, buddy.” “Don’t call me Buddy.”), what starts off as a zany buddy movie with chuckle-inducing slapstick soon loses some of its sparkle.

Some, not all. For Russel Crowe and Ryan Gosling are perfectly cast, in tremendous form and obviously having a blast. As are director Shane Black and his co-screenwriter Anthony Bagarozzi who inject the dialogue with terrific riffs. And the score by composers David Buckley and John Ottman is a blast. “The days of Ladies and Gentlemen are over,” says Holland after a teenage boy asks him if he wants to pay twenty bucks to see his well-endowed pecker. But judging by the end of the movie which leaves the door ajar for a sequel, the days of The Nice Guys are far from numbered!

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Peter Callaghan
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