Appealing actors, appalling writing and direction

The Nice Guys Running time: 1hr 33min Starring: Kim Basinger, Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling DIRECTED BY Shane Black PRODUCED BY Joel Silver FOR ABOUT the first six minutes of The Nice Guys, it looks as though Shane Black and Joel Silver have managed to recapture the rudely funny brashness of the Lethal Weapon series and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. And then for the next punishing and repetitious 110 minutes, it becomes all too evident they have not.

A ride with another pair of oddly matched private dicks in the smog-and-porn-smothered Los Angeles of 1977, this seamy slice of violent slapstick pairs a game Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling as a mutually abusive duo.

The opening scene is outrageous enough to whet the appetite for a tasteless, impudently anti-pc wallow in the Hollywood of 40 years ago. On a twisty road not far from the tattered Hollywood sign, a hot rod with Misty Mountain licence plates careens out of control, crashes on to a house and leaves lying, very exposed atop the wreckage, a voluptuous young naked woman whose dying words are, “How do you like my car?”

Misty, it’s no surprise to learn, was a porn star, and the mystery of her death becomes intertwined with the search for a missing girl named Amelia that brings together two private investigators. In their brutal-meet-cute, the gruff and beefy Bronx-spawned Jackson Healy (Crowe) breaks the arm of the younger, booze-buzzed Holland March (Gosling). But the latter, who has a clear-eyed and unjaded 13-year-old daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), is one step from the gutter so this inauspicious pair becomes a team that finds its level among the lowlifes and bottomfeeders that lurk in the cisterns of the entertainment business.

This being Southern California, the self-styled solitary ops can’t help but mingle with the rich and swell. Here the rot is personified by Judith Kuttner (Kim Basinger), Amelia’s mother, and whose position as chief of the California Department of Justice almost automatically signals that she’ll dispense anything but.

That the film mostly falls flat has more to do with unconvincing material rather than with the costars, who are more than game for the often clownish shenanigans Black and his co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi have concocted for them. In fits and starts, the actors display a buoyant comic rapport.

Crowe is the stalwart immovable object, ready to lead with action and ask questions later. Gosling provides an extreme contrast as a slim, nervous, disorganised clown whose sense of responsibility to his daughter provides his only motivation to get his act together. The actors are appealing and have their moments, even if the writing and direction are underserving of them. – Hollywood Reporter