“The Nice Guys” (2016) refer to Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), muscle for hire who hides his homicidal tendencies by defending helpless women and girls, and Holland March (Ryan Gosling), an opportunistic screw-up PI and father to Holly (Angourie Rice), a thirteen-year-old girl who is very invested in her dad’s work and well-being. When Healy and March’s assignments clash, they team-up and get sucked into a conspiracy with far reaching implications in the government, business and the underworld. Shane Black directed and co-wrote with Anthony Bagarozzi.
I remember when “The Nice Guys” was in theaters. I considered seeing it because the preview was engaging as a comedy with two actors who are usually as serious as a heart attack, but I decided against it because I just was not interested in the story, and while the cast is superb, I am not such a big fan to watch them in anything. In the past, I was really hard on Black because I did not like “The Predator” (2018), but he has made more movies that I like than not: he penned the first three “Lethal Weapon” films, wrote one of my favorite chick kicking butt films, “The Long Kiss Goodnight” (1996), starring goddess Geena Davis and wrote and directed “Iron Man 3” (2013), which I liked, and I know that I am in the minority, but I enjoyed that movie.
I made the right choice to wait until “The Nice Guys” was streaming and watch it at home. It is simultaneously too long and gets better as it unfolds—by the end, you will be laughing out loud at the joke grenades involving Nixon and falling. There are some memorable bad guys, especially the lead assassin, John Boy (Matt Bomer) who almost deserves his own movie. He is so bad ass then when Healy and March are headed to confront him, Black gives us a brilliant sequence showing us how he is a bad ass before we ever see his face.
Black does some of his best visual work ever in “The Nice Guys.” It may be his masterpiece. He creates a pitch perfect period piece set in 1977 Los Angeles. The composition of every scene offers a reward to eagle-eyed viewers. The nature of violence and action is omnipresent and accidental/providential. Anyone can catch a stray bullet, and while we are focused on the action between Healy and March versus various henchmen, it is people at the edges of the frame who catch the bullets that miss the heroes, who are vulnerable, but there is a joke that they are immortal because they never die. Those near them are not as fortunate. Violence walks a tightrope of being serious and funny by being stylized and choreographed to seem random, but it does feel authentic to the era on and off screen. It pays homage to a period of gritty metropolitan cinema of decay while pulling its punches slightly with an odd couple bromance.
“The Nice Guys” creates a world without women or at least women with longevity. Healy is divorced, and March is widowed. They find happiness with each other through their partnership. The opening scene has a flashy sequence which links women’s sexiness with their mortality. Growing girls are at risk as they enter this phase. There is a slight dissonance between Healy’s words and actions. He assigns fault to little girls being sexually precocious to leverage their budding beauty for favor, but his actions punish the grown men for messing with little girls. This dynamic puts Holly in a strange predicament. On one hand, viewers love plucky little girls who talk like adults and are smarter than the grown-ups around them. On the other hand, as I get older, I have begun interrogating this type of character.
Holly is stepping up because March is her only parent, and she thinks that she must take care of him. She visibly shows disappointment in his failures, which include farming out her care to other families and making her responsible to follow through and transport herself to those other families. It is important to reframe how “The Nice Guys” depicts Holly’s spunky disobedience. Because she is a kid, not precocious, she ends up in dangerous situations to help him. March’s redemption story arc is to show that he can follow through and redeem himself in her eyes. She also exists to act as a(n annoying) moral compass to Healy. The film is effective in using to create tension by fearing for her safety and as a catalyst for the men to improve himself, but like the problematic way that Healy sees girls, this film sees her as their equal. If a girl is the equal to grown men, the girl is not being rewarded, but the men are being negligent, which fits their stations in life, but the film seems to characterize them as caring and present for letting her be a part of the investigation and keeping her apprised. Parentification is abuse, and little girls exist to serve. Holly is a character whose life revolves around her dad and Healy, but their actions are never condemned as harmful.
“The Nice Guys” is focused on an investigation, but long after their jobs are done, they still pursue their leads at the expense of their personal safety. This film pokes fun at self-serious activists, especially their histrionics whereas Healy and March are cool and cynical. They get as invested as the activists while not actually caring about the issues. Healy has a grudge, but March does not have a dog in the fight. The film never explores why they decide to follow through. This project developed long before the 2016 Presidential election. It is hard to ignore that an important plot of the film is the use of porn instead of journalism to expose corruption in government and business, specifically the car industry. While this story is not based on a single real life story, the catalytic converter conspiracy is rooted in a real story. One explanation for why the pair pursues the conspiracy is that Black is using this movie as a cover to expose serious issues. Is he using his platform, fiction films, in the same way that directors like Adam McKay and writers like Charles Randolph create star-laden dramas about real life events to educate audiences because documentaries are not as effective?
Other reviewers suggested that Black is exposing the corruption of the film industry, but I disagree. The car story, “Detroit,” seems to be the nefarious player, and the movie industry plays a heroic, flawed role that ultimately leads them to be victims unprepared for the opposition. Even though Bergen Paulsen (Gil Gerald) is the one ordering the killers, he is barely on screen and never punished. The villain’s complicit cover is the government. The face of the government is a white and black woman. They are punished. People have theorized that they are stand-ins for the Democratic party, Hillary Clinton. It fits perfectly, but does not make sense with the development timeline. It is not that Black was trying to make parallels, but that “The Nice Guys” expresses a common American sentiment which played out with the ascendence of Presidon’t. While everyone knows that the real power rests in the hands of men like Bergen Paulsen, they are less comfortable challenging him and making real change than his flunkies, women in power and black men as tools of violence. Audiences are more comfortable with patting two men on the back for going after the flashy payoff and being personally fulfilled than making systematic change. Does it sound like men on the left?
