164) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Director: Shane Black
Year: 2005
Plot Summary: A petty thief posing as an actor is brought to Los Angeles for an unlikely audition and finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation along with his high school dream girl and a detective who's been training him for his upcoming role.
A hilarious parody of films like The Big Sleep or Double Indemnity, Shane Black takes all the conventions of a film noir and turns them into a darkly funny buddy comedy in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a movie that hits you with jokes so fast and hard that you won't fnd a minute to catch your breathe.A petty thief, Harry, finds himself on the run from the police after a robbery goes wrong. In an attempt to shake his tail, he runs into an audition for a crime movie. Much to his surprise, the producers and director think Harry is perfect for the part and immediately send him out to Hollywood to prepare for the role. There, he is given detective lessons by private eye and film consultant Gay Perry and soon finds himself entwined in one of Perry's cases when they witness a murder.
The film does a spectacular job of taking the hard-boiled dialogue of 1940s noir flicks and turning it into a work of comedy gold. Though only used a few times in the movie, Harry's voiceover is a perfect example of this as the usual first-person perspective that you'd find in films like Out Of The Past is replaced by a bundling, wholly unreliable narration that hilariously jumps back and forth as Harry 'remembers' important things he forgot to mention earlier. It also amusingly breaks the fourth wall as Harry, in one scene, actually asks the audience "Gee, do you think that scene will come back later?".
Like The Big Lebowski before it, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is also very funny for its intentionally convoluted and far-fetched mystery story. Shane Black is, quite obviously, teasing the audience to keep up as he throws more and more names into the mix and makes the roots of the murder run deeper and deeper. However, Black is also a talented writer and, therefore, he knows the limits to which he can run this idea. Although he may want it to be ridiculous and tangled, he understands the fine line between entertaining and infuriating.
Furthermore, its rare that a film finds a perfect balance between action, mystery and comedy. A movie like Tropic Thunder suffered for letting the humour slide into the background during the last act as the action scenes took centre stage, while In Bruges few faults come in the finale in which the action feels forced into the comedy. However, even when everything starts to tie up with a torture scene, car chases and a shoot out on an L.A highway, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang remains both thrilling and jaw-achingly funny.
A cool, sharp, fast and constantly funny satire of both Hollywood and the film noir genre, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the very definition of entertainment.
4/5
1 comments:
Great fun film. It struggles sometimes but the sharpness overcomes the awkward places it puts itself in.
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