Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

‘Sex. Murder. Mystery. Welcome to the party!’ says the tagline to Shane Black’s directorial debut, and a party it certainly is. Black wrote the screenplay to the Lethal Weapon films and Last Action Hero, but here he takes his writing ability to whole new dimension.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Harry Lockhart, a thief who sets off an alarm during a robbery and his partner subsequently gets shot. Running from the police, Harry stumbles into a film audition as a detective whose partner has, extremely conveniently, just got shot. Needless to say he takes method acting to heights it has never reached and they send him to Los Angeles. Lockhart then meets Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) who is, as it happens, gay. Along the way, he meets his childhood crush (Monaghan) and the three get embroiled in a sex-fuelled murder mystery.

The plot emanates from a sensational script that is elaborate in its purest form. I think after a second, or even third, viewing I would still find it hard to grasp. The dialogue is unlike anything else I have seen this year. It has emotion, depth and, something that is seldom seen in modern cinema, laugh-out loud subtle humour. The film is an archetype for smart comedy.

The narration is unique, but sometimes too unique. It is refreshing to see the narrative flipped, twisted and tangled until it becomes an incoherent jumble that works, and works well. It also tears up the Hollywood rulebook completely by poking fun at the filmmaking industry for their predictable starts, middles and ends. It was a risky move and one that paid off.

The acting is superb. Robert Downey Jr. is at the top of his game and this film continues to cement him as a big draw in Hollywood. He seemingly plays the complex role of Harry with ease and delivers each line with perfection.

Val Kilmer plays an anti-stereotype gay detective and produces the best lines in the film with his dry humour. He says “Look up idiot in the dictionary, you know what you’ll find?”. “A picture of me?” replies Harry. “No. The definition of an idiot. Which you are!”.

The direction of the film is very well done. Each shot has a motive, each frame has a meaning. The film constantly smashes conventions and leaves them shattered. In the expected ‘chick flick’ segment, the carefully edited close-ups make the audience find humour in it that wouldn’t exist otherwise.

Raymond Chandler novels seem to be a subliminal focus of the film but, as Gay Perry puts it, “this isn’t good cop, bad cop. This is fag and New Yorker”.

Overall, this film is an outrageously bold display of unique cinema. More often than not, you see a film that is trying to be clever but it never achieves it and consequently becomes a bland duplicate of what we have seen before. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is intelligent and it tells you that it is! Sex? Murder? Mystery? Let the party begin.

Last edited: 28th May 2008