WHERE, OH
WHERE, DID THE BUDDY MOVIE GO? It died with hoop earrings, pink-lipstick
and polka-dot fashion wear. Or did it? I’m not sure. Nor am I exactly sure what happens within
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang’s celestially sardonic comedy-noir murder-mystery… something
about a body in a boot… a missing sister… abusive parenting… necro-urolagnia… whatever,
the point is: the eighties have been hip again for sometime now, and with
the re-hipness comes the restoration of the epochs drollest raconteur,
one Shane Black.
Mr. Black is the man responsible for ‘exploding’ and then scuttling
off from the 80s-90s action-film resurgence; creating the Lethal Weapon saga;
The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and even had a say in the immensely
enjoyable, yet berated, Last Action Hero. Black eventually fled the landscape
due to accusations of undue money-mongering (he quickly became the highest paid
screenwriter of all time) and went drinking for a decade; wallowing as a vacant
socialite in the L.A. highlife… which is where Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang find
it’s feet.
Robert Downey Jr. knows a thing or two about excess. He made his breakthrough
performance alongside Black’s most recognisable creation, the kooky Martin
Riggs (a.k.a Sir Mel of Gibson) in Air America, shortly after he used his newfound
celebrity to become a coke-snorting machine, hoping in and out of prison. Who
better then, to play the moral man in Black’s swipe at Hollywood’s
duplicity and overindulgence?
We find Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr.) as the narrator; causally mumbling the film’s
back-story. He was an amateur magician, now he’s a petty thief. We then
find him being mistaken for an actor (with some ‘Marlon Brando shit’),
casually telling a girl that he ‘invented dice as a child’; protecting
a worse-for-wear girl (Michelle Monaghan); nonchalantly reeling off Black’s
trademark one-liners, and eventually gets the crap kicked out of him. It acts
a white flag with a shiny-handle; it is Black apologising for all the clichéd
tough-guy characters he had spawned, and it’s his weapon of intent; to
use the tired set-ups he’s created and spin them entertainingly on their
heads.
Entertaining, yes, but not so coherent. Black’s narrative decision
to have Downey Jr. act as a post-modern noir-voiceover / projectionist, moves
the film to a Marmite predicament (you’ll either love it or hate it) and
its often difficult to choose the former. In trying to be a smarty-pants, pointing
out its own plot devices, etc. it patronises its audience, and discourages the
viewer from investing emotionally in the story. Something Black doesn’t
seem too interesting in doing anyway, as we lose narrative lucidity about the
mid-way point, allowing instead for some wonderfully comedic scenes and one-liners;
there’s a quick game of Russian Roulette, there’s a punk-rock Steven
Seagal… some testicles get electrocuted… corpses get peed on…
Luckily, the detached storytelling gives the film licence to take a little break
from realism. Shane Black is the man who can create a character cool enough to
get beaten up and moments later, still be charming enough to seduce the girl,
and sleep with her best friend (in reality, he should be home crying). He even
get his finger ripped off and makes light of it (again, he should be home, crying).
Shane Black is also the guy who made gunplay and odd-couples so cinematically
delicious; the odd couples have changed from black man and white man, to black
man and white woman, to white man and gay man…
Val Kilmer plays Gay Perry (*gaffaw*) a hard-nosed homosexual private eye, hired
to train Harry Lockhart for a potential film role. Cue some predictable, yet
agreeable, banter between the sexually orientated. Thankfully Kilmer does not
use this opportunity to clog up the screen with another irritating overly-camp
portrayal of homosexual men, instead he plays the role monotonically
deadpan (almost), and perhaps too much so, as he pales against the vibrancy and
quirkiness of the charming Downey Jr. (he’ll be appearing co-starring in
David Fincher’s
Zodiac in early 2007, folks) and rising star Michelle Monaghan.
Unfortunately, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang isn’t perfect. For all its smart-arse
bravado and acerbic humour (even the unavoidable ‘slushy’ scene is
done with a finger missing) there are coherence problems-a-plenty. Yet, besides
the addiction of occasionally tedious narrative postmodernity, this is a successful
rehabilitation of the long absent Shane Black and of his own brand of quality ‘man-movies’ you
can actually enjoy. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, then, is a worthy attempt by Mr. Black
(it’s his first effort as Director) to resuscitate the rotting corpse of
the his once all-powerful action-comedy genre… and then pee on it. Why…?
Because it’s funny.
