SubToretto’s review published on Letterboxd:
Everything about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is working at the same level here too, but this one has a few more bits of special sauce to make it stand out. I think KKBB is more consistently “great” but the highs in this one are so much higher. Bigger laughs and bigger explosions, and Ryan Gosling is a snivelling powerhouse of comedy.
I find the mystery of this one a bit harder to keep up with than KKBB, but that’s not a slight, you just will be rewarded more for paying attention. There’s so many good bits, both individual ones and running gags and the times they payoff for an even bigger gag. The Gosling on the toilet scene makes me belly laugh every time, Crowe hitting people is both brutal yet satisfying (that sound design!), Matt Bomer deserves a series about his floppy-haired hitman, Angourie Rice threatens to steal the film: Shane Black just knows how to make people memorable and funny.
The action is bigger and even more so than his other efforts, I really noticed and enjoyed the mini setups and payoffs within his action (and the comedy) scenes. A gun will be disarmed into a jacuzzi, so it can be used later during an attempted drowning. Gosling will find a body, because he fell onto it, BECAUSE he was drunk and wet because of mermaid interrogation. Just perfect comedy baked into storytelling.
The shot with the lighter reveal is gorgeous, inspired and makes me want to high-five the screen.
There are very few movies that mix violence and comedy so well like this, where it’s like a new version of slapstick. “Smackstick”? “Chuckleduster”? Ooooh, I like that one.
This is the best Chuckleduster ever made, and it should’ve been a blockbuster. A Chuckledusterbuster!
Movie #4/31 of CHRISTMAS 2022
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