Ryan Gosling, as a widowed dad (to a precocious pre-teen played by the scene-stealing Angourie Rice), and Russell Crowe, as a dumpy tough guy with a penchant for touching up his victims to the Nth degree, become an eccentric revelation in this smart and eminently watchable action comedy.
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The movie is written and directed by Shane Black, who wrote the first two Lethal Weapon movies and, more recently, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3.
The solving of the convoluted mystery – which gets as thick as the smog then blanketing Tinseltown – is done by Holly, the 13-year-old daughter of the recently widowed Holland.
Then again, there are some inspired moments, such as when enforcer Jackson Healy (Crowe, paunchy and amiably violent) tracks down Holland March (Gosling – sweet, clumsy, effortlessly amusing ) in a men’s room stall.
Gosling also spoke of his happiness to work with Black, having grown up a fan of his movies.
This run-down, wood-paneled world of AMC Pacers and The Pina Colada Song makes an appropriate setting for this lightweight yet diverting action comedy that, aside from being too long, has the sense not to take itself too seriously.
Crowe, who’s the size of a Humvee here and has the force of authority to match, plays hired muscle Jackson Healy.
The emphasis here isn’t on the complexity or hopelessness of their case, which involves many murders and a conspiracy reaching up to the boardrooms of the big three American carmakers – whose logos get prominent play onscreen.
“It’s un-American not to love buddy movies“, adds Crowe, an Australian resident who was born in New Zealand.
What makes “The Nice Guys” so fascinating, and fun, is that Black treats this densely structured story like a hyper-violent screwball comedy.
Although a shade overlong, Black and co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi have penned a real crowdpleaser – a sublimely silly, wonderfully inappropriate and frequently hilarious film, which deftly blends buddy movie traditions with deliberately farcical action and noir-esque machinations. The stars, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, are aces. But nearly immediately I got sucked into the action and fun. All they can do is be charming, be amusing, say pithy things about their new movie The Nice Guys, and hope that sells and people go to see it. “What do I got??” he wails.
While not as strong, or cohesive, as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys is still a humorous film with a multi-layered plot underneath.
Holland is investigating an alleged post-mortem sighting of Ms. Mountains by the woman’s elderly aunt, whose unreliability as a witness is nicely counterbalanced, in Holland’s eyes, by her ability to pay.
So on the first day of the shoot, Gosling snuck on set early to try upping the ante on a scene in which his character, trapped in the bathroom, attempts to threaten Healy.
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Crowe, not seen all that much on screen in recent years, is sporting a scratchy voice and looking a bit, um, burly, let’s say. (We know his iconic Maximus from 2000’s “Gladiator” is in there somewhere, but we’re not sure where.) Hey, that voice and look works just fine for this character, who’s rough around the edges. “We have no connection whatsoever”, Crowe deadpanned, describing their chemistry at a press conference in Cannes.
