KISS KISS, BANG BANG

"Perry: Look up idiot in the dictionary. You know what you'll find?

Harry: A picture of me?

Perry: No! The definition of idiot. Which you fucking are!"

Sometimes a film comes along and hits you in the face, it is just so good and so unexpected. For me, KISS KISS, BANG BANG was one of those films. It is a movie so brash, so full of itself, and frankly, so gutsy I couldn’t help but love it.

The film stars Robert Downey Jr (in the role that deserves to put him back on the A-list) as petty thief Harry Lockhart in New York who gets caught up in the movie business. Through a series of lucky draws, close calls, and misunderstandings he lands a role as a detective, and receives lessons from real-life private eye Gay Perry (Val Kilmer). Consider Gay a 21st century upgrade of Sam Spade, a gumshoe detective who looks out for himself, is an asshole, and can talk quickly very well. Gay is also, not coincidentally, gay.

KISS KISS, BANG BANG is Shane Black’s directorial debut, but you would never think so while watching it. He has been in the movie industry for almost twenty years, penning all four of the LETHAL WEAPON movies, and his experience shows. Black is able to pile on sub-plot on top of sub-plot mixing with the major plot, throwing characters in and just as quickly throwing them off without missing a beat.

One of the most important of these subplots is Harry meeting up with his his high school sweetheart Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), now a 34-year-old failed actress. I suppose high school sweetheart would not be the best way to put their relationship, now that I think of it. “I was the one she confided all her secrets with in high school, while she went and fucked every other guy in sight” Harry tells the audience through narration. The narration in this film is perhaps the most entertaining part. I laughed harder at what Harry was thinking throughout the film than I did at any other movie in a long time. Black effortlessly mixes important plot points and frivolous information through the narrative, which Downey Jr. spits out at if it really is his mind thinking, with stutters, mix-ups, rewinding, pausing, and analyzing.

At the end of the movie everything is tied together (almost everything, anyway) and the last scene is executed perfectly in the same witty, sardonic, and hilarious tone that the rest of the movie plays at. “Don't worry, I saw THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I'm not going to end this 17 times” Harry remarks. How great is that?

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