Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Hey everyone,
In the past couple of months Thomas has been secretly rearranging our netflix queue moving all sorts of nonsense up to the top, guaranteeing that I am bound to be disappointed. Examples: Flightplan, The Siege, 83 Charing Cross Road, Near Dark and Equilibrium. You may have heard of Flightplan (aka worst Jodie Foster movie ever), but the others are pretty obscure or old. And all of them are pretty darn bad - except for the first 2/3 of 83 Charing Cross. But the last third was dismal enough to earn an overall bad review. In addition, some of the films that I missed last year that should have been outstanding ended up disappointing/boring me. Yes, I'm talking to both of you, Corpse Bride and Wallace and Gromit.
Finally I had enough and reordered the queue. My first selection was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer and it was awesome. It felt like a return to the glory days of the 90s when Tarantino penned scripts you'd want to watch over and over. As this film proves, screenwriting's what it's all about. And interestingly enough, the screenwriter, Shane Black, was one of Hollywood's fabled Young Turks back in the day - and its highest paid screenwriter. A couple of standouts are Lethal Weapon andLast Boy Scout to name a couple. Then he wrote a couple of bombs and disappeared. Now he's back, thank goodness.
In the movie, Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr) is a thief who lucks into auditioning for a role as a private detective in a Hollywood movie. In preparation for the audition, he shadows a real life detective, Val Kilmer's Gay Perry. The two go out on one of Perry's cases and in the course of events, dead bodies start showing up. In the meantime, Harry sets out to woo his old childhood friend Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) who's now a struggling actress. The three get tangled up with some bad guys and spend a few days trying to solve the case and exchanging lots of amusing dialogue. Some suspension of disbelief is required, as the plot is a bit unrealistic, but that's really beside the point. The point is the character development and teh dialogue. Particularly between Kilmer and Downey Jr. Both were typically excellent and it was obvious that they had oodles of fun making KKBB.
A sample exchange courtesy of IMDB:
Perry: Go. Sleep badly. Any questions, hesitate to call.
Harry: Bad.
Perry: Excuse me?
Harry: Sleep bad. Otherwise it makes it seem like the mechanism that allows you to sleep...
Perry: What, f***head? Badly's an adverb. Who taught you grammar? Get out. Vanish.
Kilmer's delivery makes it all the funnier. I can only hope that this duo is re-paired in the future. If so, we as an audience have a lot to look forward to.
The only downside was the casting of Monaghan. I disliked her heartily in Mission Impossible III and though she has a more interesting character to play in this film and doesn't do a bad job, I couldn't help but heartily dislike her in this film as well. Superficial as it may be, I think it's her face. Just looking at her annoys me. So in this dream future where Kilmer/Downey Jr amuse us once again, I hope they find a more agreeable leading lady.
Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: I ain't bashful, I'm from Nashville!
-sunday
In the past couple of months Thomas has been secretly rearranging our netflix queue moving all sorts of nonsense up to the top, guaranteeing that I am bound to be disappointed. Examples: Flightplan, The Siege, 83 Charing Cross Road, Near Dark and Equilibrium. You may have heard of Flightplan (aka worst Jodie Foster movie ever), but the others are pretty obscure or old. And all of them are pretty darn bad - except for the first 2/3 of 83 Charing Cross. But the last third was dismal enough to earn an overall bad review. In addition, some of the films that I missed last year that should have been outstanding ended up disappointing/boring me. Yes, I'm talking to both of you, Corpse Bride and Wallace and Gromit.
Finally I had enough and reordered the queue. My first selection was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer and it was awesome. It felt like a return to the glory days of the 90s when Tarantino penned scripts you'd want to watch over and over. As this film proves, screenwriting's what it's all about. And interestingly enough, the screenwriter, Shane Black, was one of Hollywood's fabled Young Turks back in the day - and its highest paid screenwriter. A couple of standouts are Lethal Weapon andLast Boy Scout to name a couple. Then he wrote a couple of bombs and disappeared. Now he's back, thank goodness.
In the movie, Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr) is a thief who lucks into auditioning for a role as a private detective in a Hollywood movie. In preparation for the audition, he shadows a real life detective, Val Kilmer's Gay Perry. The two go out on one of Perry's cases and in the course of events, dead bodies start showing up. In the meantime, Harry sets out to woo his old childhood friend Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) who's now a struggling actress. The three get tangled up with some bad guys and spend a few days trying to solve the case and exchanging lots of amusing dialogue. Some suspension of disbelief is required, as the plot is a bit unrealistic, but that's really beside the point. The point is the character development and teh dialogue. Particularly between Kilmer and Downey Jr. Both were typically excellent and it was obvious that they had oodles of fun making KKBB.
A sample exchange courtesy of IMDB:
Perry: Go. Sleep badly. Any questions, hesitate to call.
Harry: Bad.
Perry: Excuse me?
Harry: Sleep bad. Otherwise it makes it seem like the mechanism that allows you to sleep...
Perry: What, f***head? Badly's an adverb. Who taught you grammar? Get out. Vanish.
Kilmer's delivery makes it all the funnier. I can only hope that this duo is re-paired in the future. If so, we as an audience have a lot to look forward to.
The only downside was the casting of Monaghan. I disliked her heartily in Mission Impossible III and though she has a more interesting character to play in this film and doesn't do a bad job, I couldn't help but heartily dislike her in this film as well. Superficial as it may be, I think it's her face. Just looking at her annoys me. So in this dream future where Kilmer/Downey Jr amuse us once again, I hope they find a more agreeable leading lady.
Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: I ain't bashful, I'm from Nashville!
-sunday
posted by Sunday at
1:46 PM
2 Comments:
A little info on the 1/3 bad movie: 'Charing Cross Road is where book worms go. London's famed literary road still retains some of the romantic charm of 84 Charing Cross Road.' Even better it is a 15 minute walk from my front door.
Cheers-
Cyd
By
Anonymous, at 9/10/2006 12:02 AM
Black co-wrote Last Boy Scout w/ a guy whose name I can't remember and at the time, it fetched the highest price for an original screenplay ever. Vanity Fair, if I recall, ran a piece on Black within the last year. Boy Scout, excepting only True Romance (another Tony Scott vehicle) was simply the best Guy Movie of my adolescence.
By
Anonymous, at 9/11/2006 7:50 PM
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