‘The Nice Guys,’ Shane Black’s sprawling L.A. noir, turns 10
Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe teamed up on a 1970s-set period piece about crime, porn, and suppression of the catalyic converter.
I’ve said this many times before, but one of my favorite types of movies is a sprawling Neo-noir, set in Los Angeles and dipping into bizarre corners of the city, with a complicated, convoluted plot that I’m still not sure I totally understand, even after countless viewings.
This is The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, The Big Lebowski, Inherent Vice, and so many other movies.
And another of the best is The Nice Guys, Shane Black’s 2016 film about a private eye (Ryan Gosling) and an enforcer (Russell Crowe) who solve a complex mystery involving a dead porn star and evil auto executives. While trying to parse what happened, the two engage in nearly nonstop banter.
Throughout, everything is rendered in gorgeous 1977 period detail, starting with that vintage Warner Brothers logo.
The Nice Guys turns 10 years old this week. It debuted at Cannes on May 10, 2016, and opened in theaters 10 days later. It wasn’t a huge hit when it came out that spring, but it’s a beloved film in critical and cineaste circles, and its lack of a sequel is an occasional Film Twitter gripe.
The film certainly holds up, though I prefer Inherent Vice, which came out two years earlier.
Gosling plays Holland March, a depressed private eye haunted by the recent death of his wife, and not very capable of caring for his 12-year-old daughter (Angourie Rice). Crowe plays Jackson Healy, a professional tough guy, and the two become unlikely partners in investigating the death of a porn star named Misty Mountains. I’m still not clear if her name is a Tolkien reference, or a Led Zeppelin one.
