The Nice Guys is your basic hoot.
In 1977 LA, muscle for hire Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) teams up with drunken, inept but somehow lucky PI Holland March (Ryan Gosling) and his sparky 13-year-old daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) to investigate a wildly improbable conspiracy involving the making of an experimental porn film designed to expose smog-creating car manufacturers. Exactly. There’s a corrupt head of the justice department (Kim Basinger), a daffy actress (Margaret Qualley), a Mafia hitman on the loose (Matt Bomer) — and lots of chrome, moustaches, and sleaze, car smashes, wallopings and shootings. Gosling makes an excellent alcoholic fall guy, Crowe, although quite a tub nowadays, is as enthusiastic a thumper as ever.
What more could you ask for? Jokes? There are pratfalls, there are idiocies. March likes to say: “You know who else was following orders? Hitler.” And, equally knowledgeably, “Five years from now, tops, we’ll all be driving electric cars from Japan.”
Directed by Shane Black (Lethal Weapon writer, Iron Man 3 director) and produced by Joel Silver (Matrix, Die Hard, Predator, etc), The Nice Guys is a Saturday night special. Any buddy movie depends on how well the pair work together and Gosling and Crowe hold each other up nicely. A franchise already?
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