More bang for your buck
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Dir. Shane Black; starring: Robert Downey Jr, Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan
4/5
Exploding onto the big screen like Raymond Chandler sucking on a crack pipe, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is the most exhilarating cinematic event of the year. Consistently funny, lovingly-shot and at times sphincter-clenchingly violent, this film will leave you reeling. Although hard to categorise, the film lies somewhere between the self-referential offerings by Tarantino, Wes Craven and Spike Jonze, and 50s detective thrillers and pulp novels.
Think neo-noir meets action, a bloody head-on collision between Pulp Fiction and The Big Sleep with no survivors. The convoluted story line revolves around former magician/aspiring actor Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr), in LA for a perverse work experience with private eye Gay Perry (Kilmer).
The unlikely pair, described drolly by Kilmer as ‘not good cop/bad cop, fag and New Yorker’, soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery involving Harry’s old flame, a violent businessman and a mystery corpse in Harry’s shower. The film’s dynamic stems from the chemistry between the unlikely duo, with the clash between Downey Jr’s dumb everyday-Joe and Kilmer’s savvy, increasingly exasperated private dick providing much humour and pathos. In Harry and Perry, Downey Jr.
and Kilmer have finally found roles to resuscitate the corpses of their ailing careers. Having slept-walk his way through the 90s in clag such as Ally McBeal and Natural Born Killers, Downey Jr. injects Harry with enough smutty appeal and charm that we can’t help rooting for him, while director/writer Black has miraculously succeeded in persuading Kilmer to remove the large spade that’s been stuck conspicuously in his rectum since Batman Forever.
Black’s styling of the film is effective and imaginative, his probing of shallow Hollywood low-lives contrasting with the beauty of the City of Angels. However, it is the sharpness and wit of the script that make this a winner. The gags are fast, furious and regular and they are surprisingly intelligent for your average Hollywood blockbuster. But the film misses out on the coveted fifth star because it sums up so much of what is wrong and frustrating about modern, Western cinema.
It is so dazzling, so fast and exciting that it is easy to miss the film’s entire lack of originality. Like Kill Bill and Sin City before it, the film borrows so much from the style and humour of previous masterpieces that the whole exercise occasionally seems pointless.
10th Nov 2005