A quirky, enjoyable 2005 flick starring Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the first directorial effort of longtime Hollywood screenwriter Shane Black though very, very different than you might expect from his scripts for big hits Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, and The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Instead Kiss Kiss is a slyly funny sendup of old time private eye flicks in the Sam Spade/Mickey Spillane mold, with the action dictated by the stereotypical structure of a series of fictional novels about PI Johnny Gossamer. Downey is a small time New York City thief called Harry Lockhart who, running away from a toy store job gone bad, finds himself in a movie casting call where he impresses the producer (played by Larry Miller) enough to get a trip to LA for a screen test; Downey’s character also narrates the movie and the voice over dialog is, well, snarky and not at all what we’ve come to expect.
Miller takes Downey to a big party at Harlan Dexter’s house; Dexter (Corbin Bernsen), a former star turned wealthy businessman, has upscale private detective Gay Perry (a buff Val Kilmer) on the payroll and Downey is set up with Kilmer for a ride along the next day to prep for his screen test. Note that Kilmer’s character is homosexual and his first name is Perry, the Gay being a nickname with which he seems fine.
Also there is a starlet wannabe called Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) who catches Downey’s eye and he follows her to a chic bar after the party. She catches his eye for a good reason: they were best friends growing up in rural Indiana until the two lost touch when she ran away to Hollywood at 16, twenty years before this. Harmony recognizes Harry but he’s got no clue until she can’t keep a straight face and tells him.
So where’s the mystery? Harmony’s younger sister arrived the morning of the party, stole her driver’s license and credit card and hired Perry to do some tracking of the man she thinks is her biological father. See Harmony told sis just before leaving home that their father, who had been molesting the younger one, was not her ‘real’ dad and instead she was the product of a hookup with one of the stars of the Johnny Gossamer movie shooting in their hometown nine months before she was born. Sis figured out her father was, you guessed it, Harlan Dexter.
Harry’s ride along is that tracking job and in the field he and Perry see a female body put in a car trunk and then the car launched into a lake. Thinking the woman might still be alive they get her out of the water, though of course she’s dead and (farce alert) they take corpse and redump her on an anonymous LA street. Not anonymous enough since the killers (Mr. Frying Pan and Mr. Fire) follow them and put the body in Harry’s hotel room.
Meanwhile Harmony gets a call from the cops. Her sister’s been found dead, most likely a suicide. Harmony doesn’t want to hear that and gets Harry to try and find the truth, and he pulls Perry in, albeit reluctantly. Complicating the investigation(s) further is the news that Harlan Dexter’s daughter is also dead. She was estranged from him for 10 years but returned from Paris in the wake of Dexter’s wife’s death a few months before, reconciled with dad and withdrawn her lawsuit disputing mom’s will.
After much car crashing and gun shooting, some deaths and many injuries, and lots of laughter all the deaths come together into a single thread. Sadly, Harmony’s sister actually was a suicide; she saw Dexter having sex with a woman (Pink Hair Girl, played by Shannon Sossamon) she thought was his daughter and the idea that ‘both’ her dads were incestuous monsters was too much to handle. Miss Pink was not his daughter and in part learning her real identity was a key to the final answers. Plus, back in Indiana for her funeral, Perry made up for this a little by giving Harmony’s bed-ridden father some cruel payback.
Definitely a smarter, funnier movie than one would have predicted from Shane Black and also avoided the very common trap of taking obvious insider potshots at Hollywood. Downey, Kilmer and Monaghan are all strong.
recommended
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