Single father and PI Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is hired to investigate the apparent suicide of porn star Misty Mountains. His leads require him to track down a girl called Amelia, however, she doesn’t want to be found. As Holland’s search intensifies, he discovers Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) – a less official PI, but one who certainly isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty – and his brass knuckles, both of which were hired by this Amelia character to keep Holland away, for fear he may force her to return to her mother. Things worsen when Amelia disappears and Jackson realises that it was not only Holland who was looking for her in the first place. Naturally, the two men are forced to team up and take on the eccentric world of your typical 70s porn star to uncover a suspected government conspiracy.
To mark the glorious end of exams, the best bitch and I planned another trip to the cinema, this time to see The Nice Guys. The film had first taken my fancy around Easter when the trailer came to my attention, and its worldwide release over the past few weeks has been met with phenomenal praise, so between us, we thought, why not?
The two lead performances have been amongst the many features of this film critics and audiences alike have been raving about, and of the two, I think Ryan Gosling’s performance came as the biggest surprise to everyone. We’ve not seen much of him in a solely comic role, but after this, the world will be screaming for more. Gosling was very funny, particularly in his drunken scenes which were amongst the numerous highlights of the film.
Next up is Russell Crowe who was the perfect compliment as Jackson Healy to Gosling’s Holland March. He was gruff and the humour from his character was very dry, which was one of the reasons why the two characters worked so well together. On the one hand, you had Gosling who played the sort of by-the-book PI who would be an absolute genius if he took his head out of the manual for a second and lived in the real world, and on the other, you had Crowe who played it completely straight the whole time. I will be bold enough to label them as this generation’s Riggs and Murtaugh.
There is no doubt that the writing for this film was razor-sharp. The Lethal Weapon comparisons that have been made by many people, not just myself, are hardly a surprise when you consider Shane Black, who wrote for the franchise, also wrote and directed The Nice Guys. It was then that you could say with some certainty that you would be in safe hands. The script was full of little sniggers, and there were also plenty of big laughs throughout, but the actual storyline was fantastic. At first, it seemed a little too complicated, but by the time you’d neared the final minutes of the film, everything fell into place and it all made sense, making for a nice little insurance policy in case any of the laughs fell flat.
Overall, The Nice Guys is a raging success and I think will be one rare films that actually leave the audience wanting a sequel which, judging by the initial response, I’d say could be a very real possibility. The chemistry shared by Gosling and Crowe is terrific; laughs are frequent and there is plenty of action on the side, as well as a banging soundtrack to accompany it all. Even, “I had to question the mermaids,” wouldn’t be a valid excuse not to see this.
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