Today, though, in Our Age of Marvel, the latest of Black's shoot-‘em-up dialogue comedies plays like a throwback to the days of studio classicism, to a time when our top actors could play, like, guys rather than mutants. Here, in The Nice Guys, Ryan
Acting a little in the lead roles are Gosling, as a detective too corrupt to bother serving his clients, and Crowe as a hired goon distinguished by a good heart — and, actually, there's not too much to the character, other than some background stuff: bad divorce, a stint in the Navy. Still, you can see why Crowe would sign up. Playing this down-and-out
Gosling, too, charms, swanning through
Black has layered his beat-downs and budding friendship over a gritty/dirty ‘70s noir plot, the Chinatown/Long Goodbye milieu of rapacious elites performing terrible deeds yet protected by their power within the system in which we're all stuck. The detective's function in such a scenario is to uncover one terrible, tip-of-the-iceberg truth only to crash helplessly into the full berg itself. Black honors the letter of that genre rule, making his heroes so hapless they only find clues that they've fallen
The emphasis here isn't on the complexity or hopelessness of their case, which involves many murders and a conspiracy reaching up to the boardrooms of the big three American carmakers — whose logos get prominent play onscreen. Instead, Black invests in his leads' blooming pal-hood, which means that even when they lose they triumph. They're noir tourists, their lives enriched by their visit to someplace rotten.
But as an action comedy, R-rated division, The Nice Guys is hard to beat. Black knows how to pace and escalate a fight and a film, and he springs wicked surprises all along — scene after scene dances around trapdoors that the audience falls into. As always, in a Black film, much of Southern California gets shot up, although this time Los Angeles is played by Atlanta. Other signs of his authorship: swearing kids, a Christmas carol, a party for the ages and the infectious sense that the writer/director adores this material beyond all measure and is invested in showing you why. The Nice Guys, ultimately, might be a little too nice, but Black and his cast really want you to have a ball.