The Nice Guys Review: 4 Ups And 1 Down

The Ups:

4. It Tries To Be So Many Different Things At Once (And Succeeds)

Just what is The Nice Guys? Is it trying to be a pastiche of seventies detective flicks or a genuine thriller? In terms of style, is it a '70s period piece or an all-round Shane Black picture? The answer is all of them.

It's not filmed like a comedy, instead scoring laughs by breaking an illusion of seriousness, but neither is it treated like a straight throw-back; there's some very creative shots and modern means used to create the era (something I'll get to in more detail in a bit).

And that is all down to the master writer-director behind this. Shane Black has already proven himself one of Hollywood's sharpest screenwriters and, now he's vowed to not let anyone else mess with his material, things have only been amped up. He's able to conceive a film on a pitch and follow through on it without interference; he can make a straight seventies flick and pepper it with his witty dialogue, rather than having another director take what's on the page as the whole point.

And, yes, a bit of the film is set at Christmas.