No joke is left uncracked in Shane Black’s hilarious and gorgeous crime caper masterpiece, The Nice Guys. The film opened to critical acclaim but box office apathy in the summer of 2016, with a vibe that foreshadowed Tarantino’s immersive period epic Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, with which it shares a good deal of DNA. Set in L.A. in 1977, The Nice Guys pops off the screen with vintage cars, fly outfits and sumptuous production design that fully captures the decadent vibe of the locale and the decade. But what really sells the movie, and makes it imminently re-watchable, is the odd couple vibe between its two leads, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. They more than make up for the somewhat shaggy plot with their prickly chemistry as they each push the other to be both their best and worst selves. Sure, they’re “nice guys,” but they go through a lot of other descriptors along the way.
First making his mark by penning the screenplay for the original Lethal Weapon, Shane Black seems to have a knack for teaming up two improbable dudes and throwing them into a blender of action and wisecracks. Gosling is Holland March, an always-drunk private investigator looking into the suspicious death of a porn star, which leads him to another young actress, Amelia (Margaret Qualley). Crowe’s Jackson Healy has been contracted by Amelia as protection, so our guys’ first encounter involves Healy kicking March’s ass. (Just before breaking his arm, he helpfully shares what kind of fracture it’s going to be.) Soon, sniffing out deeper mysteries connected to a porn production involving various mysterious deaths, the two team up to protect Amelia and uncover the big baddies, who end up being much bigger and badder than either was prepared for.
Gosling displays a surprising gift for pure slapstick. There’s a moment when Healy confronts March in a bathroom stall. Gosling, pants around his ankles, draws a gun but the stall door starts closing so he slams it back open to aim, but his cigarette falls out of his mouth and into his underwear, and the resulting yelps and gyrations are pure comedy. Crowe watches, deadpan, a master of the straight-man stare. Later, upon discovering a grisly corpse beneath a tree, Gosling channels the pop-eyed panic of Lou Costello, seemingly unable to breathe or mutter anything beyond a shuddering whisper, veins bulging, and the whole moment is played for big broad laughs just the way it would have been on a vaudeville stage a century ago.
Does it get to be too much? Gosling edges up on Ryan Reynolds territory by the end of the movie, taking every opportunity to quip and mug and generally make a boob of himself like he’s doing Deadpool cosplay in a lost episode of “The Rockford Files.” This act is always leavened by Crowe’s weary stare, or by March’s teenage daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), who doesn’t give him an inch and is twice as mature as he is. “Am I good person?” he asks her at one point, and she answers before even a beat goes by: “No.” It’s the inclusion of Holly’s character that actually moves the story forward for the detective duo. In some tender moments of attempted parental supervision, March tries to sideline his whip-smart daughter, but she finds ways to insert herself into the investigation, turning up clues that would otherwise have slipped beneath notice.
By the final reel, the plot has gotten so twisted that it’s hard to parse exactly who is looking for what, but that’s not an issue when the main dynamic is about whether or not these ragtag gumshoes are going to survive their own misadventures. Suffice to say that all roads lead to the Detroit Auto Show, where the Big 3 car companies are intent on suppressing a hippie propaganda film that exposes collusion about anti-pollution measures in their new models. It’s delicious irony that Ford, GM and Chrysler are perceived as wielding immense power and influence–just look at all those gorgeous gem-toned cars sparking on their revolving platforms–when history knows that Detroit’s dominance was already waning, and the corporate behemoths would be toothless within the decade. This resonates with Healy’s nihilistic attitude about the detective’s role and the futility of seeking justice: that no matter what their sleuthing might turn up, at the end of the day the only thing that’s changed is that the sun has gone down.
The criminal aspect of The Nice Guys‘ underratedness isn’t just that it’s an overlooked movie, but that it was never given a sequel. Of course, lots of movies set up sequels that no one wants (looking at you, Hobbit), but The Nice Guys ends on a perfect note of promise as March and Healy admire their twin cartoon avatars in a Yellow Pages ad for “The Nice Guys Agency.” It’s hard to believe that these two characters didn’t go on to stumble backwards into even gnarlier adventures, but whatever happened next with these guys is a mystery that will never see the light of day.
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