Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Kiss, Bang, Bang comes on all smooth, looking slick and trying to fast-talk its way into favour, but scratch the surface and there's not much under its veneer. Not that there's meant to be much, I suppose. After all, this is a film where a career criminal who stumbles into an audition to be an actor, somehow ends up being a Private Investigator, all within the first ten minutes or so. Convoluted doesn't even begin to describe it.
There's a few amusing moments and inspired ideas scattered here and there – Robert Downey Jnr accidentally pissing all over a dead body springs to mind - but only a few in a film that moves at a million miles an hour, spraying ideas around haphazardly not unlike a unmanned hose turned up all the way. Val Kilmer is widely lauded for his turn as Investigator “Gay Perry” - but take away the ‘Gay' bit and there's really nothing too special about it.
For a while the plot threatened to interest me – enough that I thought it might turn out to be an interesting blend of modern-noir/comedy – like a slapstick L.A. Confidential if you will – but writer/director Shane Black seems more intent on resorting to the cheesy-one-liners and rampant action that made him something of a wunderkind in Hollywood for his Lethal Weapon screenplays, and the entire third act seems like a direct transplant from one of them.