Shane Black, who wrote and directed this very entertaining buddy-sort-of-cop movie, is the definition of hit-and-miss. He burst on to the scene as the writer of Lethal Weapon in 1987, which reinvigorated the buddy cop film at the time, took time out to act (if you can call it that) in the Schwarzenegger classic Predator) and went on to write and direct Iron Man 3, which earned half-a-billion. But he is probably best known recently for writing excellent buddy cop films that flop. Besides this one, there's also the last movie Val Kilmer was good in, alongside Robert Downey Jr., in his pre-Iron Man doldrum years, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005). Both are excellent, notable for their hilarious banter and combination of high production values with unexpectedly subversive elements (perhaps the reason both flopped). Anyway, this one is set in a day-glo version of the seventies (in contrast with all the color-bleached versions of the seventies we see nowadays, like Joker) and combines Ryan Gosling (showing his pre-Barbie comedic chops - notably a great ability to shriek like a girl and do straining-to-speak-gurning that would be the envy of Lou Costello) with Russell Crowe, sporting the ample gut that is evidence of his lack-of-commitment to the film star body-maintenance diet, and probably part of the reason he hasn't been in anything of note for years. Crowe is the recovering alcoholic heavy Jackson Healy and Gosling is the sad-sack current alcoholic sleazy detective Holland March, unable to forgive himself for the house fire that killed his wife and left him single-parenting the precocious Holly (the now ubiquitous Angourie Rice, very impressive).
They meet because the former has been hired by "Amelia" to scare off people following her, while the latter has been hired to find her (or more accurately, hired by the aunt of recently-demised porn star Misty Mountains (whose vehicular death opens the movie) because she thought she saw her alive after the funeral and Holland works out it was Amelia she saw). Healy actually breaks Holland's arm but turns around and hires him after he (Healy) has encountered two hit men also on Amelia's tail and starts to worry about her. Turns out Amelia is on the lam after having appeared (with Misty Mountains) in a sort-of-porn film called "How do you like my car, Big Boy?" which is just a means to deliver an environmental message.
People associated with this film keep dying because it would damage the Detroit Big Three - will Amelia be one of them? This film, which has the great Keith David and the largely-retired Kim Basinger show up in small roles, is surprisingly brutal (thanks in part to a psychopathic killer called "John Boy" who is on Amelia's tail,
and thanks in part to Healy), and veers from said brutality to witty quips (and surreal moments, like the Nixon story) with head-snapping abruptness. But it's non-stop entertainment, and the leads are all excellent. The ending sets up the possibility of sequels that never came, sadly, but still should.
It was just what we needed after a shitty week. If you want to watch it, it's on Netflix, but only for a couple more days!
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