The Nice Guys Movie Review

The Nice Guys (2016)

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Written by: Shane Black, Anthony Bagarozzi
Directed by: Shane Black
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Kim Basinger
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
In '70s L.A., a mismatched pair of private investigators track a missing girl related to a dubious suicide case.

Verdict
This movie is a lot of fun, from the quirky characters to the slick dialog. Gosling and Crowe make a great pair. It can be contrived and over the top, but it's the kind of movie that you'll watch with a wry smile on your face because it's so smart.
Watch It.

Review
Written by Shane Black who ascended to fame when he wrote Lethal Weapon (read my review), this is another buddy cop movie. Russell Crowe is tough guy Jackson Healy and Ryan Gosling is hard drinking, accident prone Holland March.

Surprisingly smog is at the center of this caper. Healy and March begin working together to find a missing girl. This same girl had paid Healy to 'talk' March into suspending his investigation of her. Now she's gone. Crowe and Gosling do a great job in their roles, and their odd couple relationship is one of the main reasons this movie is so much fun. While their investigative success is doubtful at best, it adds to the charm. These guys aren't skilled, they're lucky. That luck takes them all the way to the finale.

To Healy's dismay, March is quirky and perennially out of his depth. His humor often skews to slapstick, like an early attempt to break a window that goes quite wrong. That's when I knew I was going to like the humor in this movie. There are so many funny parts that balance action and dialog. It even subverts the boiling coffee defense trope.

Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling play Jackson Healy, Holland March

They succeed by, and despite, tripping over their own feet. It's contrived, but easy to ignore with a movie that has fun like this. That's the point. They're nice, rather than good. The plot loops back over itself with everything entangled. The missing girl, the suicide, the smog protest group, and even auto manufacturers are all linked to the subject of smog. The boy from the protest group that helps them is Jack Kilmer, Val's son.
While it connects with such a neat bow, it's quite deft with how smooth this works out. You get to piece together how everything is related, as this doesn't spoon feed you answers.

The references, while period accurate, skew older with The Waltons and an Omar Shariff joke. A lot of people aren't going to catch them.

March's daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) is an invaluable asset that helps them crack the case. She's a great character in part because she's a child that functions as an adult. It's a trope that often works well in movies as it does here.