In the directorial debut of Shane Black, writer of the Lethal Weapon Series, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang fails to deliver. I’ve read a lot of other reviews faulting it for being all style and no substance. I personally can’t fault the film for that. It would be like saying Lethal Weapon is all style and no substance. And? So? That’s the point of a film noir/mystery/action movie. Movies like this are made simply to distract and entertain us. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang definitely achieves that goal, however it is lacking something that strong performances from Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer couldn’t overcome. Downey and Kilmer are, at times, very funny together and both deliver some great lines. There will surely be one or two scenes that make you laugh out loud, but there are others that are just duds. The script and the narrative set up tries too hard to be clever without following through.
Harry Lockhart (Downey) is a petty thief in New York who accidentally becomes an actor, travels to Los Angeles for an audition, gets set up with private detective Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) for detective lessons, reunites with a childhood sweetheart (Michelle Monaghan) and they all end up in a crime caper. That sentence is complicated enough let alone the devices used in the film to connect all the dots. There is a narration by Harry Lockhart, which at times stops the film to make fun of itself and involve the audience with witty jabs at the movie industry. In the end I had to wonder if the film would have been better off with no narration and just straightforward storytelling. All the inside jokes and one-liners about movies and Hollywood were the least funny parts and had me feeling that Shane Black may be a little bitter about something.
In addition, the cinematography was boring. Perhaps the reviews I read previously made me expect something super cool and full of pop, or maybe this was just the first time outing for a director that wasn’t ready it let it all fly, but I felt the visual style disappeared after the opening credits. Only one shot stuck out to me, and it was because everything surrounding it was dull.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang could have been great, but it ended up being just ok. If you’re a fan of Robert Downey Jr. or Val Kilmer and just want to be entertained for an evening then it wouldn’t hurt to rent this title. However, if you want a slick and clever crime caper that is actually clever, I would check out "Lucky Number Slevin."
**Note that Black’s screen story is based on a 1941 novel by Brett Halliday called “Bodies are Where You Find Them.” The novel is part of a mystery series with lead character Mike Shayne, exactly like the fake mystery series novels that are incorporated into Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s storyline. It would be interesting to find out how much of this film is taken from the novel and how much is created by Shane Black. I’m guessing a straightforward modernized adaptation would have served the source material better.
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