Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Perhaps it’s because I’m a generation his junior. I don’t have the experience of understanding within the context of that time the noir-influenced French New Wave, or the Spanish-Italian genre that spawned the Agente .077 series (a spoof on James Bond) or the Duccio Tessari feature of the same name as this film by Shane Black. My awareness of that genre is defined by the culture in which I grew up, as opposed to…
ROBERT DOWNEY JR. and VAL KILMER star in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action comedy thriller
“Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.” Photo Credit: John Bramley. ©2005 Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I feel compelled to quote Godard at the beginning of this commentary. No, not that quote… This one:
To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body—both go together, they can’t be separated.
– Jean-Luc Godard, quoted in Godard, Richard Roud
“That quote,” the one I refused to, is the one Roger Ebert himself admits he quotes “tirelessly”—of guns and girls. This one is my response. First, let me state that I respect Ebert’s opinion and I don’t disagree with his observations. Well-founded as they may be, I must present a different point of view in contrast to his criticisms of this film.
Perhaps it’s because I’m a generation his junior. I don’t have the experience of understanding within the context of that time the noir-influenced French New Wave, or the Spanish-Italian genre that spawned the Agente 077 series (a spoof on James Bond) or the Duccio Tessari feature of the same name as this new film by Shane Black. My awareness of that genre is defined by the culture in which I grew up, as opposed to the 1960’s.
Whatever the case may be, I found this film enjoyable in the way I found “Domino” enjoyable. Sure, there were nonsensical plots in both, but does it really matter? If, as Godard insists, all you need is a “girl and a gun” then we have the girl, and we have the gun. We also have a very self-aware film that isn’t quite as wry with its wit as, say, “Pulp Fiction,” but we recall that Shane Black is not a direct student of New Wave as much as Tarantino—who sometimes cannot get over himself as he’s paying homage after homage to director upon director, style upon style.
Robert Downey Jr. plays Harry Lockhart, a mediocre crook who finds his way into the movie business in a rather circuitous manner that’s funny as long as I don’t give any hint of it—which is to say it’s bluntly predictable yet bizarre, nonetheless. After an opening sequence bathed in enough yellow to let us know it must be a flashback, we find Lockhart has moved from Indiana to Los Angeles and attends parties regularly, “You know, the kind where if a girl’s name is Jill she spells it ‘J-y-l-l-e.'” The dialogues with Lockhart tend to be as erratic and tangential as his narration. “What do you do for a living?” asks a woman at a bar. “I invented dice as a kid,” deadpans Harry.
He tells us of Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan), an aspiring actress who grew up reading the pulp novels of Johnny Gossamer. She thought Gossamer was real and, allegedly, left home for Los Angeles to find him. After a has-been actor trespasses, drunken, into her living room and falls out of her balcony (in a robot costume, mind you), TV crews arrive on the scene to interview her. A producer, Dabney Shaw (Larry Miller), sees her on TV and wants to get her into acting… and probably bed.
Harry finds himself recruited by Lane into a perplexing mystery regarding her sister’s death. He involves his mentor, “Gay Perry” (Val Kilmer), who is teaching him how to be a detective. Together, they form this movie’s Riggs and Murtaugh—the writer/director, Shane Black, also wrote the screenplays to all four Lethal Weapon films. The joke about Perry isn’t simply that he’s gay. He’s just this side of straight, and happens to like men—unapologetically. However, his greatest moments of humor are not from yet another gay stereotype pushing comic, flaming hysteria to its limits. Instead, Perry, to use his own words, plays “fag” to Harry’s New Yorker. Two sides of the same side of the coin, in other words.
I admit that from there, the plot is warped and makes little sense. There’s a number of events that could be regarded as Deux Ex Machina… but I submit a) That’s irrelevant when there’s no normal pattern of logic in the plot for it to have outliers, and b) my latin stinks and I couldn’t think of the plural form of “Deus Ex Machina.”
What few surprises there are, I don’t intend to spoil. The film is mainly about a mood that younger audiences… perhaps in their mid- to late-twenties, will appreciate most. The movie reminds me of the pacing and gags of “Intolerable Cruelty.” Sure, we know what’s coming when the lights go out on Wheezy Joe, but it’s still entertaining to see it unfold. That’s slapstick, and sometimes, if you’re in the right mood, it just works.
A significant part of what makes it work are the performances by Val Kilmer and Robert Downey, Jr. Kilmer takes his talent for sardonic wit to new heights while bouncing off the manic energy of Downey who plays like Jon Cusack in constant fast-forward, always out-thinking himself. Here, Downey and Kilmer exhibit impeccable timing and preparation, having both graduated through similar ranks—from definitively 1980’s teen comedy (“Real Genius” and “Weird Science”, respectively) to more challenging fare. I saw enormous career-recovery potential in Downey’s performance as Jerry Renfro in Frank Oz’ ingeniously funny “Bowfinger”, and Kilmer redeemed himself of the ailing Batman franchise with David Mamet’s intellectual thriller “Spartan.”
Perhaps on a different day I’d feel differently about this absurd comedy of errors, which not only includes an incident involving a detached finger and a dog (yes, you do know where this is going) but also the old “something in my breast pocket stopped the bullet” trick. The film works with a comedic style of storytelling for the sake of wheeling out ironies in a story that itself is not composed of significant substance or logical cause-effect relationships, but isn’t it obvious that the plot in such storytelling, as opposed to strict setup-and-punchline jokes, exists solely for the purpose of providing amusing incidents throughout a series of otherwise irrational, perhaps even absurd, events?
Well, there’s no arguing that if you prefer the comedy of Henny Youngman, which is genius in its own right, then this film isn’t going to suit your style… However, it is recommended for those who wish to sit back, have fun, and not worry about too much plot. Ringing in at 102 minutes, “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” is the right length for a romp that’s more about the style than it is the substance… yet for a film almost entirely about its design and method, it does tend to have more going on in it than most of that subgenre.
It is true, you can’t have one without the other, but I never ascribe to the idea that every film needs to be so many parts style to so many parts substance… It depends on so many variables. This film’s story doesn’t depend on any variables, it makes them up as it goes along… but then, isn’t the spontaneous invention of drama what the characters in “Breathless” were entirely about?
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 • Running Time: 102 minutes • MPAA Rating: R for language, violence and sexuality/nudity. • Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
