Film Review - The Nice Guys (2016)

The Nice Guys is the new film written and directed by Shane Black and concerns two private detectives (Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling) on the trail of a young girl name Amelia (Margaret Qualley) in 1977 Los Angeles but she will not be easy to find.

Now I was very much looking forward to this film before it came out as the previews for it looked great, it looked funny, violent and hard edged and every time I saw the preview for it I laughed my head off.

Sadly however the film is a bit of a disappointment but before I delve into that lets talk about what I did like:

- Firstly I loved Angourie Rice in this film who plays Holly Holland's daughter, every scene she was in she was like a mini Sherlock Holmes in that she thought things through and knew when to defend herself she also plays off Gosling and Crowe very nicely and I hope to see more of her in future movies.

- Secondly the film does have moments where I did laugh out loud, sometimes an action moment would play out or a funny gag would come on screen or a cool 1970's reference would pop up on the screen I would laugh my head off (oh and there are some great references to late 70s films peppered throughout the film.)

But as I said this film was disappointing to me for two big reasons:

- Firstly the film doesn't have a clear definable villain for the audience to point to and say "That's the Bad Guy" and when you look back at the first 2 Lethal Weapon films that Black wrote they were there be it Mr Joshua (Gary Busey) and General McAllister in the first film and Joss Ackland the South African Diplomats (Joss Ackland) in the 2nd film.

Here there are a couple of guys that come and go but I felt that they needed to be molded into the one single character or have both work as a tag team to take on Gosling and Crowe but alas we got what we got and the film suffers as a result.

- Secondly the plot of this movie is all over the place and at times I did think to myself "What are they looking for here" and when I came out of the film and began to think about the plot more I thought to myself "I think I know what all that was about and I saw it in the Last Boy Scout" and that comparison began to make more and more sense to me when I thought about it as both are very very similar in terms of their plot and storyline and Boy Scout I have to say is the better film than this one.

And so that was the Nice Guys which was a bit of a disappointment I'm afraid but it has its moments, 2 out of 5.