Mark Costello’s review published on Letterboxd:
Gosling and Crowe give us a double act for the ages, easily up there with Bogart and Bacall, Tracey and Hepburn and Gable and Colbert. Given Black's filthy, frothy and fizzy dialogue, with so many genuinely funny one-liners, these two A-list Hollywood hunks take huge pleasure in trashing their reputations through drunken buffoonery (Gosling and his shriek) and toxic thuggery (Crowe and his knuckle duster).
In most films like this, the plot is an afterthought (Maltese Falcon, The Long Goodbye, I'm looking at you), an excuse to hang the zingy dialogue off and often random and thoroughly meaningless to the film overall - not so here, its dense, its intriguing and most importantly, as the plot comes to the fore in the third act, the humour and amazing character work doesn't disappear. Some surprising pathos from these two and the film's third MVP, Angourie Rice as Gosling's teenage daughter, also feels real and nicely balanced against the characters already established.
And its still got plenty of those wonderful Black-isms - lashings of period detail, plenty of skewering of the movie business and a downbeat dark ending that manages to still feel wholly fulfilling, yet leaving us in no doubt that here, just in real life, the Nice Guys don't always win.
For me, this is Black's masterpiece, narrowly edging out Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and its a worth a watch just to hear all that delicious dialogue and stuff.
I know, I know......I shouldn't say '....and stuff'. I should just say its worth a watch just to hear all that delicious dialogue..........
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