Once upon a time, Shane Black was the highest-paid writer in Hollywood.
This meant he could afford a house with a roof on it and everything. And unlike his fellow scribes, he could talk to the directors without having to press his forehead to the dirt and whip himself.
Then he wrote Last Action Hero, which only made more money than many island nations make in a year, and The Long Kiss Goodnight, which barely earned two dozen million dollars more than it cost.
For these crimes, it would be nine long years before Black's next script saw the light of day: 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Robert Downey Jr. is a petty thief who inadvertently winds up with an acting gig after a botched robbery. In L.A., he finds himself enmeshed in a deadly murder mystery with Michelle Monaghan, the girl he once loved, and detective Val Kilmer.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is carried by three characters: Downey, Kilmer, and Black's dialogue, which has more shine and body than Shia LaBeouf's pompadour. It's easy to see why Black used to command top dollar. Along with telling a cunning, twisty mystery, his dialogue constantly rides the right side of the line between hilarious and clever.
Turns out he's a pretty talented director too. Alongside the verbal humor, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is packed with slapstick and comic editing. Amputated fingers, electrocutions, shooting guys in the head, corpses dropped 50 feet onto a Dumpster: these are not things a civilized person like myself, who uses plates and restricts his worship of stone idols to solstices and equinoxes, should be laughing at. Yet Black leaves me no choice.
Of course it helps to have Downey and Kilmer handling your material, a sentence that's far too euphemistic for me to be comfortable with. Point is, any movie is made better by either of them. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has both of them.
Their seriocomic sensibilities line up perfectly with the movie, which is to Raymond Chandler's L.A. crime novels what Shaun of the Dead is to groaning brain-eaters. Part send-up, part homage, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang finds time for some Chandleresque satire of Hollywood too. An easy target? Almost as easy as the girls lining up to be cast in -- wait, nevermind. In any event, it works.
And so does just about everything else. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a funny, impish film from a guy with obvious talent. Black supposedly couldn't get work for nearly a decade previous, but he appears to be back in the club now. Watch out for his upcoming stuff.
* Contact Ed Robertson at edwrobertson@gmail.com
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