Writer-director Shane Black created one of the best buddy cop movies ever with Lethal Weapon, but his latest project takes that film’s basic premise—two mismatched dudes crack wise, solve a big case—and dials the action, and the comedy, all the way up.
The Nice Guys stars Russell Crowe as Jackson Healy, a for-hire muscle man who goes door-to-door knocking people out. One of those people is private investigator Holland March (Ryan Gosling), whom Healy ends up enlisting to help find a friend’s missing daughter. In many ways, what follows looks like the spiritual sequel to Black’s best movie, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which similarly placed two excellent actors (Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr.) into a retro pastiche of comic noir and antic violence. The Nice Guys is out in May.
