CHRIS' QUARANTINE RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY (4/24/20): THE NICE GUYS

CHRIS' QUARANTINE RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY (4/24/20): 

THE NICE GUYS

By Chris La Vigna (@Chris_LaVigna)

Your loved one is missing and these two show up to investigate, Wyd?

Man, there's just nothing like a good detective story. I love a narrative that plunges me into a mystery, and sticks me with a protagonist who is morally ambiguous at best or an outright heel at worst, to navigate me through it. And I'm far from being alone on this, which is why film noir, the cinematic sister to the mystery/crime novel, remains so beloved to this day, and why every few years there's a smattering of films released that are classified as "neo noir," movies that give us that world of mystery, criminality, lust and backstabbing, but with different settings or new narrative twists. A great recent example is the 2016 detective comedy THE NICE GUYS.

First things first, it's important to note that THE NICE GUYS was written and directed by Shane Black, who knows a thing or two about spinning yarns concerning sleuthing n'er-do-wells, having scripted certified classics like LETHAL WEAPON, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, and THE LAST BOY SCOUT. The film takes place in 1977 Los Angeles, and is dripping with the kind of sun-drenched cynicism that was gripping America as a whole during the latter half of the decade. The opening scene shows a violent car crash into a suburban backyard, and a little boy is traumatized for life as he sees a battered and barely-dressed woman emerge from from the wreckage and quickly die. Before she shuffles off her mortal coil, the woman looks at the kid, smiles bitterly, and whispers "how do you like my car, big boy?"

We're then ripped from this horrific and eroticized moment of violent mortality to get introduced two our two protagonists, Holland March (Ryan Gosling) a hapless detective who takes on hopeless cases and strings his clients along to get as much money as he can, and Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) a Bronx-born enforcer-for-hire who crosses paths with March when he's hired to rough the gumshoe up a bit to get him to drop a missing persons case he's just picked up.

Yup, this is definitely one private eye who's got his shit together...

After realizing that something truly fishy is going on here, March and Healy team up to get to the bottom of this case, which swells in size to involve bumbling hitmen, murdered pornographers, and insanely enough, the U.S. auto industry! What initially starts as a case of a runaway girl turns into a conspiracy to silence dissent against corporate greed. It's a story that feels both authentic to the anti-establishment attitudes of the 70s and sadly relevant to our modern age of fighting against all kinds of corporate greed and incompetence.

Like any Shane Black script, the dialogue is sharp and cracks come at lightning speed, thankfully Gosling and Crowe are more than up to the task. They have a natural buddy cop chemistry, the kind that Black was able to create between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in LETHAL WEAPON and Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans in THE LAST BOY SCOUT. 

But here, there's a little more self effacing humor at play; Crowe plays Healy as a humbled brute with a heart of gold, a guy who makes no bones about the kind of person he is, but desperately wants to be worth a damn. And Gosling plays his part with an endearing brand of snark, and even displays some moments of genuine prowess for physical comedy. 

The movie was a financial flop at the box office, which is a damn shame, because it's easily one of the best films of the past decade in my book. It manages to feel both like a hearkening back to a bygone era of action-comedy, and a fresh story that speaks to socio-political issues we face as a country today.  It's currently streaming on HBO GO and available to rent on Amazon Prime, so check it out and see what you've been sleeping on for far too long.