Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution
Rated: R
Website: http://kisskiss-bangbang.warnerbros.com/
Release Date: 2005-11-11
Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen, Ali Hillis
Director: Shane Black
Screenwriter: Shane Black
Music Score: John Ottman
WorkNameSort: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Our Rating: 4.00

At a stage in their careers when most successful screenwriters have settled into a grateful pursuit of the lowest common denominator, it’s a kick to see a scribe like Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout) cranking out material that seems designed to test his abilities and curry a halfway-intelligent audience’s interest. Not that Black’s directorial debut, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, is any sort of art flick; it’s an old-fashioned detective caper predicated on the mistaken identities, giddy gunplay and macho insult-slinging that are the genre’s basic currency. But from the first sentences of star Robert Downey Jr.’s wiseass narration, everything is so amped-up and self-aware that the hoariest developments play out with an invigorating freshness. I’d call the movie the buddy-picture Scream if I thought that were any form of compliment.

With lightning speed and comic zest, Kiss Kiss watches Downey’s Harry Lockhart graduate from a life of petty Manhattan thievery to a budding career as a Hollywood actor. Conscripted to play a fictional version of the criminal he secretly is, Harry is sent to pick up pointers at the feet of private dick Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), whose out-of-the-closet orientation doesn’t impede his way with a right cross or withering putdown. Perry’s latest case involves a Tinseltown heiress and a dead body in a car trunk; Harry, meanwhile, is preoccupied with the nasty fate that’s apparently befallen the sister of an old flame (Michelle Monaghan). Complicated? You betcha, and purposefully so. Because as is so often pointed out in the pulp novels the movie takes as its inspiration, cases like these have a way of getting tangled up together.

Writer/director Black has a helluva good time pointing out the clichés of crime fiction and action cinema, letting Downey’s Harry count them off in a running voice-over that couldn’t be better suited to the actor’s motormouth delivery. The role is clearly the best thing this veteran prankster has done in a while. And who was president the last time Kilmer was even watchable? Viewers with real educations will guffaw as Harry and Perry stumble through a landscape defined by accidental shootings, fun-dumb sexism and gleeful disrespect of the human body. (Defenseless corpses get dropped from high roofs and even urinated on.)

Make the proudly, knowingly vulgar Kiss Kiss part of a double-feature rental with Frank Miller’s Sin City, and you’ve bought yourself a golden ticket to Guy Hell. Just try to forget that this stuff was once mainstream: Compared to the rock-stupid Miami Vice retreads that now glut the market, it’s so witty that it’s practically niche.

This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2005.