Meet The New Abbott & Costello in “The Nice Guys”
By Skip Sheffield
Meet the new Abbott & Costello: Russell Crowe and Ryan
Gosling.
Crowe and Gosling play mismatched buddies in the Shane Black
comedy “Nice Guys,” set in a smog-saturated Los Angeles in the gritty, goofy
1970s.
Russell Crowe is in the serious straight-man Bud Abbott role
of professional enforcer Jackson Healy. Ryan Gosling is in the nervous, screw-up
Lou Costello role of Holland March, a shady private investigator who has become
an alcoholic since his wife died, leaving him the single father of 13-year-old
Holly (Angourie Rice).
Healy and March meet violently. Healy has been hired by
Amelia (Margaret Qualley) who thinks she is being stalked by March. Amelia wants Healy to scare March. Healy goes
one better. He breaks March’s hand.
Meanwhile a porn star named Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio)
has gone missing and Amelia fears she is dead. Despite their differences, Healy
and March are forced to join forces when Amelia herself disappears.
The Los Angeles of 1977 was a mean, nasty place. Shane
Black’s script reflects all the negatives of a down and out City of Angels. Black
first rose to prominence with “Lethal Weapon” and its sequels. Healy and March
blunder about from location to location, occasionally fighting and dodging
bullets from a ridiculous hitman named John Boy (Matt Boner, having a ball
being creepy).
If there is a hero in this unsavory mix it is little Holly,
played with wisdom beyond her years by Angourie Rice, who like Crowe is originally
from Australia. Holly acts as her father’s keeper, chauffeuring March around
when he is too drunk to drive even though Holly is too young to have a license.
Kim Basinger looks like she has been preserved in wax as
Judith Kutner, local head of the Department of Justice. Like all the adult
characters she is not as pure as she seems.
“The Nice Guys” makes me glad I made it through the 1970s
relatively unscathed. It was a turbulent time here in Florida too. At least we
can laugh about it now. This movie will certainly make you do that.
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