Filmology Rating: 3.13 out of 4

The Nice Guys, written by Shane Black (Ironman 3, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Lethal Weapon) and starring Russel Crowe and Ryan Gosling, is about a Private eye and hired enforcer in the late 1970’s who team up to find a young woman named Amelia who has mysterious disappeared. Soon it becomes clear that other people are also after her for reasons unknown and that everyone involved with Amelia has ended up dead. What turned out to be a simple missing persons case soon turns out to be much more than they bargained for.

Every now and then a movie comes along that really makes you admire filmmaking. We live in a day and age where Hollywood seems to be more concerned about quantity over quality so whenever a good quality film like the Nice guys comes around, it is a breath of fresh air. If you haven’t picked up on it already, I really enjoyed this movie! It had all the ingredients that add up to not only an entertaining movie, but a very well done movie as well.

Let’s start off with the basics; we have a script that was well written and engaging, we have two amazing actors that have awesome material and lines to go off of, and we have a movie that feels like we are back in the later 70’s. The costumes, the classic noir buddy cop feeling, and the overall vibe of the feeling was something that hasn't been done in a long time. To me, it felt a lot like the movie LA. Confidential (partially because of Russel Crowe and Kim Basinger who were both in that film) in how the movie felt. A mystery and what was thought to be something simple turns out to be much more than thought. To me that was a great thing! I didn’t know what was going to happen next and I was always wondering as to where the movie would go.

Now the two main leads Russel Crowe and Ryan Gosling were amazing together. For doing their first movie together, they worked surprisingly well. The dialogue and the banter between was both excellent and also hilarious (Again giving lots of credit to the written and director Shane Black). Each character was very different in both their morals and mentality of going about their work but at the same time, they were really similar and because of this, clicked so well and were able to work well with one another as characters. One last thing about these two, this is for sure their best roles in recent years and quite possibly some of their best performances yet. Ryan Goslings character Holland had a daughter named Holly that was excellent as well. For only her second role in a movie, she did really well and wasn’t a silly little child character in the movie but rather had depth, emotion, and was also very smart as well. She helps just as much to help try and solve the case and it was another refreshing thing to see.

Overall, this movie had great action, hilarious and well-rounded characters and dialogue, great writing and directing, and much more. It will have you bursting out in laughter which was really surprising to me. I knew that there would be some funny lines but I didn’t expect to burst out laughing. Along with the humor, I was surprised with everything. I knew that it would be a good movie based off who was staring in it and who wrote and directed it but I was blown away with just how much I did enjoy it! I would highly suggest seeing this movie! It lost out on the weekend numbers to Angry Birds and Neighbors 2 when this is by far the best one out of the three. Go see this movie!

Rating: See It 

-Nick