AThere’s a lot of “Why have it at all?” stuff in this movie. Which is kinda fine in a shaggy comedy flick, but certain things are clearly meant to add up to something and don’t.
Like the bits about Russell Crowe not killing folks. So weightless (this film has so little regard for human life that it’s impossible for us to suddenly start caring about that stuff) and kinda out of place.
I remember an interview from at least 15 years ago in a French magazine (that was the first time I saw a journalist basically saying ‘you don’t pay attention to this guy, but he is the goods’ about Black) where he was candidly saying there was a reason he was writing stories about suicidal veterans, that he was, and I quote, familiar with the idea of putting a gun on his head. He also had a bad breakup which left him quite depressed at the end of then nineties and partly explains his absence. Looks like he got better.
AFor a writer so committed to subverting tropes and making fun of cliches (stray bullets have to go somewhere), it’s a really curious blind spot. - in response to nooj.
All artists have their limits, David Mamet’s plots feel at times too mechanical (especially his con artists movies, it’s like clockwork but in a bad way) to me, same thing Joss Whedon’s constant post modern sarcasms. And I respect and enjoy their work in general…
A[quote name=“Agentsands77” url=“/community/t/155439/the-nice-guys-2016-discussion-thread/100#post_4070174”]There’s a lot of “Why have it at all?” stuff in this movie. Which is kinda fine in a shaggy comedy flick, but certain things are clearly meant to add up to something and don’t.
Like the bits about Russell Crowe not killing folks. So weightless (this film has so little regard for human life that it’s impossible for us to suddenly start caring about that stuff) and kinda out of place.[/quote]
I think it works well *because* of the “callous disregard for human life”. This little girl shows up specifically to ask questions that you never ask in this kind of story. That doesn’t necessarily turn the film into something else, but she’s there to ask our leads to be better men. Nice guys.
A[quote name=“JacknifeJohnny” url=“/community/t/155439/the-nice-guys-2016-discussion-thread/90#post_4070184”]
I think it works well *because* of the “callous disregard for human life”. This little girl shows up specifically to ask questions that you never ask in this kind of story. That doesn’t necessarily turn the film into something else, but she’s there to ask our leads to be better men. Nice guys.[/quote]
That’d work better if the violence had any sting, like it does in the best of the Coen comedies.
AYou’re moving the goalpost a lot. You can’t accuse the film of having a callous disregard for human life and then say its attempt to address that would work better if the violence were crunchier.
There’s a lot of casual violence going on. A character is set up to comment on it. She does. That’s it. Like a lot of things in the film, it’s not hugely impactful, but I don’t think Black is looking to gutpunch people or engage them in a profound, intellectual way about the nature of violence. He’s still making an airy caper, despite occasional detours into darker territory.
A[quote name=“JacknifeJohnny” url=“/community/t/155439/the-nice-guys-2016-discussion-thread/90#post_4070193”]You’re moving the goalpost a lot. You can’t accuse the film of having a callous disregard for human life and then say its attempt to address that would work better if the violence were crunchier.[/quote]
Sure I can.
If you’re going to try to give your film a moral trajectory, you also have to give the choices and actions of those individuals in the film some weight. If death has no weight in the film’s universe, it’s going to feel weird when you suddenly act as though there’s some moral line being crossed when a character kills another person.
If Black wanted to address that stuff, he had to make the film a little darker and heavier. Otherwise, he should have just embraced the fact that he was making a big, goofy, violent lark about unrepentantly shitty people and left morality out of it.
ADeath clearly has weight in the film. Like stray bullets hitting bystanders at least twice, the film shows it, but doesn’t dwell on it. You’re asking Black to dwell on things that he doesn’t need to. In Holly’s absence, we wouldn’t question what’s happening, because we don’t question our heroes. However, Crowe specifically has his actions reflected back at him and then lies because he feels ashamed of himself. That last scene with John Boy is Crowe’s chance to escape the shame and sense of uselessness that hangs over him.
The movie doesn’t need to do anything different or more, because Holly is the difference; she’s the aberration in something like this.
This is a little like that moment in KK,BB where Downey shoots the hitman in the bedroom after he witnesses the murder of the girl. That movie is filled with gallows humor, but Black pauses in that scene for a moment of reflection and gives it a gravity that he’d eschewed up until that point.
I thought the scene where the guy that looked like Sacha Cohen got comforted by Holly… and then strangled to death by Crowe when she wasn’t looking… hit that weight pretty well in the film.
ATo me, killing the random bystanders played more like attempts to up the chaos than give its violence an existential/moral component.
A[quote name=“mcnooj82” url=“/community/t/155439/the-nice-guys-2016-discussion-thread/90#post_4070206”]I thought the scene where the guy that looked like Sacha Cohen got comforted by Holly… and then strangled to death by Crowe when she wasn’t looking… hit that weight pretty well in the film.
[/quote]
In isolation, sure. I just don’t really see it as being properly connected to everything else in the movie.
Putting the question of the way the film treats violence aside for a second, we have Crowe drinking again at the end of the film, so what is this movie’s moral trajectory for these characters? And if there is no moral trajectory, why signpost those two scenes like there is one?
ANot drinking didn’t exactly help that character, who had problems that appeared to have nothing to do with alcohol and it’s also another subversion (I’m off the sauce, Jim!). You’d probably pick up drinking again after being shot at and nearly killed a dozen times.
AAnd finding out that all your efforts were fairly ineffectual in making any major change.
I would agree that Holly’s plea for Crowe to not kill at the end of the movie didn’t feel all that well implemented compared to what came before. Especially with just how cruel and deadly John Boy was… I kept expecting him to get back up for a last minute reversal that never came.
AI thought this was wonderful. The room I was in had five people. There was a line of about seventeen people waiting to get tickets for Angry Birds. Sigh.
I really enjoy the multiple mentions of the American Ninja series in there.
Black said in an interview that he went sober several years ago. I think sometime between KKBB and IM3. He said it cleared away a lot of depression and got him busy, hence the big slate of upcoming projects.
Which makes the offhand reveal of Healy’s choice to fall off the wagon… rather bleak.
Black had the perfect opportunity to kill John Boy; Crowe realizes that he pulled the grenade pin, John struggles to get his jacket off, Gosling is running away with the film and a henchman is aiming his gun at him, Crowe kicks John Boy off the roof and he falls on the henchman, KA-BOOM!!! There’s a difference between being merciful and just plain stupid and Holly crossed that line. The villains deserve their just deserts because Black wasn’t really making a 70’s movie ala Night Moves, he was making an 80’s buddy-action-comedy set in the 70’s. This movie reminds me why I love Michael Mann’s Miami Vice (2006) and American Gangster over movies based on Elmore Leonard novels where the plot takes a backseat to characters bullshitting while the story meanders which is what The Nice Guys felt like.
He’s been talking about doing Doc Savage and I don’t know why the Hell he hasn’t went after Chris Hemsworth for the part?!?