This summer we are going to again be neck deep in absurdly self-serious demi gods delivering lines like "I saw the end of the world. I could feel all this death." It's all going to be gravely voiced whispers, CG fireballs, bloodless collateral damage and, in the case of Captain America, annoying obvious quips and cocked eyebrows.
The good news is one of the genuinely original voices absorbed by the roiling behemoth of superherodom, Shane Black, director of Iron Man 3, has made good his escape from the gulag of franchise properties and has made something that looks...dare I say it...fun!
Shane Black made one of the genuinely under appreciated genre pieces of the first decade of this century. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was an unwieldy, undisciplined, violent, and crass flop. What that description omits though is how funny, surprising, satisfying and compulsively watchable it was.
Black writes with crisp comedic pace absolutely made for buddy action movies. He also has writer credits on the Lethal Weapon series. and In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang he was blessed with a re-energized but still pre-revival Robert Downey Jr. and a swaggering laconically on-point Val Kilmer, both of whom breezed through its post-millenial noir comedy setting with a great bantering chemistry. The movie failed to make money though it has gained a cult audience in subsequent formats.
Now Black returns, setting a similarly framed "bad-guys-doing-good" action farce in the perfect decade for moral ambiguity and absurdity, the 1970s. As recent films like American Hustle and Inherent Vice have proven the 70s were America's prime A-hole decade. A time when people could look and live sleazy and still be sympathetic. And now Shane Black's The Nice Guys promises to deliver a blast of grimy cringe-worthy cinematic fun. So before stepping onto the conveyor belt of pseudo-profound masked men casually pounding cities to dust, I plan on spending a couple welcome hours with The Nice Guys.
Out May 20, 2016
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