Films detailing the dark side of Hollywood have been around for a long time and for a long time they’ve suffered from the excesses of hack films that approach the subject with a taste for the lurid and the seamy. Shane Black’s KISS KISS BANG BANG certainly doesn’t skimp on the lurid stuff nor on that seamy underbelly that clings to the tinsel for dear life. It’s all laid out with unflinching detail, but also with a deliciously mordant, stiletto-sharp sense of satire that is all the more fun for sticking so very, very close to confirming all our worst assumptions about what life is really like there.
Our hero, a reluctant one, it should be noted, is Harold Lockhart. Nothing in Harold’s life as a child magician or an adult petty criminal has prepared him for the cutthroat world he finds in La La Land. And it’s not just the film business where’s landed after crashing an audition while running from the scene of his latest crime in New York. No, he lands in the middle of a blood-soaked mystery where the body count and the paranoia grow geometrically with every passing hour. Tossed into the mix is a Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), a sloe-eyed old flame who never seems to be far from the scene of some sort of mischief, Perry (Val Kilmer), also known for good reasond as Gay Perry, a suave private detective assigned to tutor Harry for a film role but not to save his hide unless absolutely necessary, and a mysterious heiress who, in the best noir tradition, turns up dead, or does she?
Also in the best of mystery traditions, Harold is an innocent, at least as to the whys and wherefores of the what and who that is spurring the body count and the attempt to frame the ex-crook for the dirty deeds. Downey is in top form with his wide-eyed wonder at what life is tossing at him with an abandon that is as relentless as it is increasingly life-threatening. Spinning wisecracks while taking punches and worse he nevertheless remains true to Harold’s tender heart and the romanticism that causes him virtually nothing but misery. As his exact opposite, Kilmer has never been better with a brittle, self-satisfied irony lacing his witty ripostes that are a highly evolved and lethally effective form of condescension.
The humor, hard-boiled, of course, is fearless, underscored by the self-mockingly convoluted plot that mirrors the low-rent detective novels that were the favorite reading of Harold and Harmony when they were kids. It’s a delicious conceit played with just the right blend of deadpan delivery and tongue-in-cheek élan. Black expertly lays out the story, skimming the borders of being completely far-fetched by keeping these characters identifiably real even if the plot isn’t, and even as corpses dangle precariously above a freeway, and the dialogue stays mere atoms away from parody.
Diabolically plotted and fiendishly clever, KISS KISS BANG BANG is a cockeyed homage to the classic noir detective film and to the industry that made it possible. Grounded in that, but blazing its own trail, it becomes one of the most original and entertaining film of this or any other year.
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