Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Detective Flick Goes Meta

Jul

20

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Detective Flick Goes Meta

≡ Category: Action, Comedy, Movie Reviews By Country, Recommended, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Shane Black
Year: 2005

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

I have to admit, I was expecting something a little different from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the first film from writer/director Shane Black, the screenwriter of such action movie classics as Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight and The Last Boyscout, like maybe a fairly straightforward action movie with a lot of snarky jokes.

Sure, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang works as a hardboiled detective yarn, but mostly it’s a meta take on the genre that’s really about Hollywood, the movie-making process, the process of screenwriting, and basically movies in general.

Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) is a petty thief masquerading as an actor who is taking detective lessons as part of his craft from Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), a real life detective. In short order, Harry falls for aspiring actress Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) and becomes embroiled in the kidnapping/murder of the daughter of a famous actor, Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen).

But forget about that for a minute.

Harry is narrating the tale, commenting on improbabilities in the plot, freezing the picture and backtracking — all sorts of breaking the fourth wall kind of stuff. Writer/director Shane Black uses this unique narrative structure to crack wise about pretty much anything that crosses his mind, and since Shane Black is apparently a movie-mad nut, what crosses his mind is the craziness of Hollywood and making movies.

Don’t get me wrong. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang does work as a detective thriller, but that’s almost in spite of itself, because Shane Black puts the actual plot in the background and foregrounds all of his wisecracking shoptalk about show business.

For folks who just like straightforward action movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang will very likely give them a headache. For guys like me, who are movie freaks, especially the sort of action movies that Shane Black is commenting on, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is hella fun. I was laughing the whole way through.

Another thing about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang — it’s probably better to see it on DVD than in the theater because the script is incredibly dense — the jokes fly by so fast, you’ll miss them if you blink. A couple of times while I was watching Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I paused the DVD player so I could think about what I just saw or heard.

Robert Downey Jr. is his usual mercurial self. He handles Shane Black’s gags with split second timing. More surprising is Val Kilmer. I didn’t know he could do comedy.

Personally, I can’t wait to see the next thing Shane Black comes up with, preferably with a higher budget. As far as inventive action sequences go, the man is hard to beat. Actually, the same is true for smart alecky dialog. There’s a good reason the man was paid four million bucks for the script of A Long Kiss Goodnight.