Director: Shane Black
Writers: Brett Halliday, Shane Black
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan
Synopsis: After being mistaken for an actor, a New York thief is sent to Hollywood to train under a private eye for a potential movie role, but the duo are thrown together with a struggling actress into a murder mystery.
I enjoy a good action comedy as much as the next person. The best action comedies take advantage of the comedic timing of its actors, bombastic action sequences, strong character dynamics, real stakes, and most importantly, a good soundtrack. Since 2005, we’ve gotten plenty of action comedies with these elements such as Hot Fuzz, Tropic Thunder, the Jump Street franchise, and the Rush Hour franchise. These movies stuck with me and are super rewatchable but most of the others that come to mind don’t compare to Shane Black’s 2005 black comedy action film, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The film is about a petty thief named Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) that gets caught up in a store robbery. While evading the cops, he runs in on a screen test. The casting director of the movie, Dabney Shaw (Larry Drake), loves his “audition” and flies him out to LA for another screen test. Harry meets P.I. (Gay) Perry Van Shrike (Val Kilmer) and he’s given on-the-job experience for his next screen test. Harry is led down a crazy path of mystery, murder, and even romance during his time in LA. This was all a lot more than what he bargained for as a petty thief posing as an actor.
I remember renting this movie from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. I was excited because I was a huge fan of Shane Black and the other action comedies that he wrote and or directed. The witty dialogue and exciting action sequences in his films have always wowed me and left me smiling after watching. This movie was one of Robert Downey Jr.’s comeback films after his time in rehab for drugs and alcohol abuse. All eyes were on him and everyone wanted to see if he still had that dog in him as an actor or if he had lost his fast talking and charming ways. Luckily, Downey Jr. rose to the occasion and gave audiences one of the best performances of his career. He plays Harry Lockhart like a fast talking, witty, hapless romantic with a need to be the hero in many situations. It’s easy to like Harry because he’s an overall good guy. When we meet him he’s empathetic about a robbery with a friend that went horribly but as the movie goes on you see that he just wanted to do something more with his life that was meaningful. The opportunity arose and he took the plunge.
We meet a lot of characters in this movie that are very influential to Harry and the shenanigans that he gets into in LA. First we meet (Gay) Perry played by the stoic and handsome Val Kilmer. Perry is a private investigator that’s intelligent, funny, and really about his business. Kilmer brings his stoic and no nonsense personality to the role. In a lot of noir and mystery films you’re introduced to antagonists that have different personalities but their common goal is to solve a case and stay alive while doing it. Kilmer bounces off of Downey Jr. very well and it feels truly authentic. These veteran actors aren’t phoning it in and giving us half assed performances. They bring Black’s words off of the page in a way that only talented actors can.. Kilmer playing a gay detective was out of the norm because there hadn’t been a lot of gay characters that were law enforcement in movies and tv shows. He wasn’t a soft character that let things just happen to him. He took charge of the situations that he and Harry got into. He’d bust doors down, start shooting when needed, played very comedic good cop bad cop routines, and more.
What would a mystery action thriller be without a love interest? Harry’s one that got away is Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan). We get flashback scenes of her and Harry growing up together. First as kids and then as teenagers, they are shown to be caring for one another and always empathetic towards each other even when there’s some messiness going on in their lives. Harmony’s an avid reader of mystery books. She’s obsessed with the Jonny Gossamer fictional mystery novels that she read as a child. This is one of the best plot points in the movie because the story is broken down into chapters. She’s seen reading these books at a place where she and Harry eventually cross paths. As the movie goes along, Harry and she compare their case to details from Gossamer’s books. Throughout the movie, we get different sides of Harmony. She’s fast talking, she’s a free spirit, and she’s very spunky. I think that this was my first time seeing Monaghan in a movie, so her performance really sent me down a path of continual viewings of her work. This is a role that I don’t think a lot of actresses could’ve played because the character is so damaged but she still keeps her heart in the right place and she continues to be that free spirit even after all of her hardship and strife.
The score from composer John Ottman really sticks with you and it’s very pleasing to your ears. It’s like a character in the film that is along for the ride. You don’t see this character in the physical form but you can hear it in the background. Pairing this music with what the actors are doing on the screen is a real treat. Black’s years of writing and directing really helped with his directing skills for this movie. He worked with a very diverse cast on this production and he rose to the occasion as a true master of his craft. Unfortunately, this movie didn’t do well at the box office. Reading articles about these movies can be disheartening but it’s how a lot of movies become cult classics. They’re cherished by a group of people around the world and then they’re introduced to this movie by people that love it. This movie is one of the few noir black comedies with action that we have from the early aughts that had its own voice. Without this movie we don’t get Black’s other unappreciated dark comedy action movie The Nice Guys. I’ll go even further, we don’t get Downey Jr. as Tony Stark without this movie. Crazy right? Well that’s what a lot of cult classics do. They’re catalysts for other movies that come after them and have influence on those movies in different ways.
