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| Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling star in "The Nice Guys." |
“The Nice Guys” jostles your funny bone and warms the part of your heart (the top right half, I think) that stores all your nostalgia. It makes you admire a time, or even a mentality, that you didn't know you missed. I wasn't alive in the 1970s and I'm not a violent person, but this is a time/universe I want to occupy (minus the guns and danger), even if only for a day.
It’s indubitably a Shane Black film—dialogue that sizzles and jokes that zing. There’s also some violence, raucous behavior, perfectly 70s outfits, and lots of glorious vinyl. Black directed as well as co-wrote the script with writing partner Anthony Bagarozzi. 1977 is as much a character in this film as its two stars, the moralistically misguided Jackson Healy (played by the talented and surprisingly bellied Russell Crowe) and the shambled mess of a detective, Holland March (Ryan Gosling, handsome even in his drunken stupor).
