Hey folks, Harry here and happy as hell that Shane Black is back and kicking ass with KISS KISS BANG BANG - and according to SuicideGirls.Com's interview with Shane - he's set to write and direct a Horror Film next. Which is about as apt as it could get. Every year Shane throws a badass Halloween party in L.A. that everyone and their brother tries to get into. This year... I'll be at the Alamo Drafthouse's screening of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY with all you can eat Spaghetti Feast and ELI WALLACH in attendance. That's a fucking night out! Hehehe... Anyway, KISS KISS BANG BANG is about to be released, and Shane will be coming to Austin to screen it at the AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL which gets started here, nearly immediately. Here ya go...
KISS KISS, BANG BANG comes out this weekend, and I love it more than
Robert Downey Jr. loves crack. Ok, maybe crack, but at least hooch.
Of all of the features I saw at the Toronto Film Festival this year,
this was my favorite. Those are bold words – I didn't meet anyone
else at Toronto this year who had this as their favorite, but I also
didn't find anyone who didn't like the movie. Shane Black has done
solid work before as the writer of the LETHAL WEAPON series, the LAST
BOY SCOUT, and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, but by both writing and
directing KISS KISS, BANG BANG, now he has broken through to a new
level to certified filmmaking super-ninja.
Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) is an all-around fuckup – he is
terrible at his chosen profession, thievery, he can't maintain a
relationship, and he is continually almost getting killed. Through an
outrageous serious of events, told in flashback, he finds himself at a
Hollywood party. There he meets Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer), badass
gay detective, and a catatonic vixen, Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle
Monaghan), who in true noir style will come to be at the nexus of
circumstances involving titillation, killers, and a few dead bodies.
Harry is supposed to learn how to be a detective from Perry for a film
role he has miraculously landed, but since he wants to get in
Harmony's pants (which truly would be a glorious place to be), he lets
her believe he is a real detective who can help her find her missing
sister.
KISS KISS, BANG BANG, is a film noir/buddy-film sandwich. And it
kills! Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer make an excellent
dumbass/badass pairing, and throwing the duo into a murder mystery
setting where they have plenty of bodies to juggle is a stroke of
genius. Val Kilmer shows he hasn't lost his comedic edge – he may be
a better straight man than he is a dramatic actor. I'm also glad to
see Robert Downey Jr. back in movies again, and here he steals the
show. In addition to having to lie his way out of trouble at every
turn, he remains in character as a decidedly absent-minded and
untrustworthy narrator. This serves the dramtic function of
scrambling some of the plot into nonlinearity, opening up whole new
goldmines of jokes and pacing. Michelle Monaghan rounds out the cast,
and her Santa suit, adding banter and chemistry, and generally smoking
up the screen with her super-hotness.
If there is a negative to KISS KISS, BANG BANG, it is that you know,
owing to the conventions of the noir genre, and Hollywood in general,
that certain things just have to happen. But like Scream did for
horror movies, here the mandatory conventions are given a wink and a
nod, even sometimes after they show up in the plot. In fact, most of
the characters in the movie are fans of the same pulp detective
series, so they either explain what is about to happen before it does,
or comment on it after the fact, but never quite in the way you
expect. This allows Shane Black to pay homage to a well-loved genre
and reap the the murder-mystery payoff, while adding a fresh angle of
his own.
That combination of the familiar and the unforeseen, combined with the
snappy writing, excellent direction, and perfect cast is going to make
KISS KISS, BANG BANG the sleeper hit of the season.
-- COPERNICUS
