Black comedy 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' is Tarantino lite

Back in the late-'80s, Shane Black was the most in-demand screenwriter in Hollywood, the guy whose 1987 spec script for "Lethal Weapon" (written when he was a UCLA student) single-handedly invented the bang-a-minute, buddy-action comedy genre.

MOVIE REVIEW

KISS KISS, BANG BANG

DIRECTOR: Shane Black

CAST: Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan

RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes

RATING: R for language, violence and sexuality/nudity

WHERE: Meridian 16

GRADE: B-

LINKS/TRAILERS
· Official site

PHOTO GALLERY

View all photos

But after following it up with scripts for 1991's "The Last Boy Scout," 1993's "The Last Action Hero" and 1996's "The Long Kiss Goodbye" (for which he pocketed a record $2 million), Black abruptly faded from the scene and has not had a credit in nearly a decade.

Suddenly, he's back with "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," a movie he not only wrote, but directed as well. It's rowdy, often tasteless and very much in the buddy-action vein of the scripts that made him famous, but in a much more comic spirit.

His story, loosely based on a '40s novel by Brett Halliday (who wrote the Michael Shayne mysteries), is about a New York thief (Robert Downey Jr.) who stumbles into a movie audition and seems so authentic he's whisked to the coast to play a detective in a Hollywood thriller.

As part of his training, he gets lessons from a real-life private eye (Val Kilmer) who is gay, and the two mismatched sleuths soon find themselves knee-deep in female corpses and a growing mystery involving the Downey character's high school sweetheart (Michelle Monaghan).

Downey narrates, making ironic jokes, often replaying scenes to make a point and sometimes facing the camera to talk directly to the audience. Structurally, the film is divided into chapters with titles of Raymond Chandler books ("The Little Sister," "Farewell, My Lovely," etc.).

The sensibility is less Chandler, however (or even vintage Shane Black), than Quentin Tarantino. Black seems to have borrowed that director's nonsensical hard-edged dialogue, black-comedy shenanigans with an uncooperative corpse and signature torture-the-hero scene.

And, truth be told, he lacks Tarantino's gift for extreme ghoulishness. When, for instance, he has Downey desecrate a corpse by throwing it from a tall building, accidentally urinating on it and then dumping it in an alley, it just seems vile.

The dialogue is hit-and-miss. Some of it is clever and funny, but a great deal falls flat, and it's so ponderously and unrealistically flooded with the F-word that, in the final scene, Black has one of his characters apologize to the audience for it.

Downey has his moments, but his prematurely ravaged face hardly makes him credible for the part of someone challenging Colin Farrell for a role. Meanwhile, Kilmer looks beefy and seems bored, and never achieves much buddy chemistry with Downey.

Yet the movie has its strong suits. It starts out with a delightful '60s-retro title sequence; it makes especially evocative use of its '50s-era L.A. locations; and, throughout, it's skillfully composed and shot to effect the style of '40s film noir.

Black also gets a particularly winning performance out of fast-rising newcomer Monaghan ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith," "North Country"), who has almost as much screen time as Downey, and makes the most of her opportunity by stealing the movie right out from under its male leads.

"Kiss Kiss" is put together well, and its numerous stunts and action sequences are imaginatively conceived and carried out with an original flair. Ironically, Black may ultimately prove to be a much better director than he ever was a screenwriter.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.

Share your own review.

Be the first to post a comment!