Indies You May Have Missed: The Nice Guys

The Nice Guys, written and directed by Shane Black, is a period action black comedy mystery film (yeah, I know, a lot of different genres there) about a private investigator, Holland March, (Ryan Gosling) and hired enforcer, Jack Healy, (Russell Crowe) who work together on searching for a missing girl and the seemingly unrelated death of a porn star, and I will say no more because, after seeing the film, I believe the official synopsis gives too much away.

When I saw the first trailer that was released for this film, I was very intrigued about what this film was going to be. Shane Black brings irreverence to his films that are a breath of fresh air and I was hoping that this would be like his previous directorial efforts, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3, and I think it’s the best of the bunch.

Shane Black crafted an insanely original film that is incredibly fun and engaging to behold. He created his scenes so well and made it feel like this was actually shot in the 1970s and it doesn’t feel fake at all, which is hard to do and I applaud the fact that Shane Black was able to do it. His action scenes were well shot and there were humorous bits that poked fun at action tropes throughout these scenes, which I thought was great. He also got great performances, unsurprisingly though, out his main actors, Gosling and Crowe, but the stand out was Angourie Rice as March’s daughter. Black got a great performance out of this young actress and I look forward to seeing more from her in the future.

Gosling and Crowe though were, as the credits suggest the stars of the show and worked incredibly together. Their individual performances were both great, but their chemistry together was easily the best part of the film. They were very funny when they were on screen together, but there were also a couple of scenes where they were able to be serious and those were executed just as well as the comedy and the ability of both of these actors to balance the comedy and the seriousness made this film so much better than it should’ve been.

I really have no big gripes with the film, which is crazy to say actually because I usually have at least one issue with every film I see, so I’ll nitpick. Matt Bomer’s character (no spoilers) needed to be in it more because Matt Bomer is an awesome actor and the character that he was portraying in this film should have had more screentime. See, nitpick.

Overall, The Nice Guys is an incredibly original film that is fun, irreverent, and hilarious with great performances from the leads and great writing and direction by Shane Black.

While this film is not technically an independent film, even though it very much feels like it is, I do not believe that enough people saw this film based off of what it made at the box office, which is a shame because this film is one of the most original and fun films that has come out in recent years.

The Nice Guys is available on Blu-Ray and DVD, as well as on iTunes and Amazon Video.