Thursday, May 25, 2006

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

"It's not good cop, bad cop. This is fag and New Yorker, and you're in trouble."

Shane Black has post-modernised his Lethal Weapon action/comedy duo formula and the result is a a funny old mix of extreme silliness and extreme violence; very funny in fact.

She might have been a bit of a zero in MI:3, but Michelle Monaghan has a memorable turn here as Harmony Faith Lane. Nevertheless, the real female lead in this movie is Val Kilmer's catty private investigator 'Gay Perry', the funnier half of a sequel-inspiring double-act with a fatigued petty-larcenist come Hollywood hopeful played by Robert Downey Jnr.

As well as Ian Fleming's James Bond the title references a quote by film critic Pauline Kael, who spotted the words on an Italian movie poster and concluded that the phrase exemplified the emptiness of modern cinema . Kiss Kiss Bang Bang wholeheartedly embraces that emptiness and the result is great, if ephemeral, entertainment.

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