Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

“Who taught you math?”

-Tom

Shane Black should write the dialogs for all future action movies. I also prefer The Long Kiss Goodnight but Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was great fun, and beautifully crafted, considering its low budget (around 15 millions, I think, which is not that much).

Just saw this last night, really enjoyed it. Though I was a little annoyed how they pussed out on the ending. Breaking the fourth wall to complain about contrived happy endings doesn’t excuse you from doing the same thing. Not really a big deal, though.

Oh c’mon dude. Abe frickin’ Lincoln! That totally excuses the pussy Hollywood ending in my book.

Of course not. That’s the name of Gene Simmons’ next project.

Well, ok, yeah, Abe Lincoln, that was funny. But…

SPOILERS

…if they were gonna have Perry live, they shouldn’t have done so much to make it seem like he was stone-cold dead on the bridge. Just a little touch like that would have made me happier. But like I said, not really a big deal, and I really liked the movie overall.

Fun movie - I Netflixed it due to the recommendataions in this thread, and I give it a thumbs up. The fourth wall stuff didn’t bother me too much, as I’m not a purist, I suppose. A little goofy, but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the movie overall.

Since the movie is pretty much a comment on Shane Black’s earlier works the fourth wall thing did not bother me either…

I enjoyed the shitty narrator part. A lot.

I finally just saw this and enjoyed it. I knew Downey and Kilmer could ace the leads in a buddy comedy, but Michelle Monaghan – she was surprisingly charismatic and frisky. It’s also rare and cool for an action movie to have a promiscuous female character who’s likeable AND survives to the end of the movie.

It’s great stuff. When I heard the title, I assumed incorrectly it was a movie version of the comic book. But it was a lot of fun.

I’d probably watch a sequel. Great characters.

Kilmer is a genius in this movie. Made me almost forgive him for his Batman craptastica.

“Look up ‘idiot’ in the dictionary. Know what you’ll find? …The definition of the word ‘IDIOT’, WHICH YOU FUCKING ARE!”

I’ve watched it as well. It’s a good film, but it definitely falls apart in the last half.

Watched it last night myself, with the wife.

Hmm, let’s see if I can get all my thoughts organizized:

[ul]
[li]I agree with the following comments made so far:[/li]
[list]
[li]The first 30 minutes of the movie are a lot better than the rest of it.[/li]
[li]Val was great.[/li]
[li]The fact that it’s making fun of the old mystery plot tropes does not excuse it from executing all of those tropes. Although the fact that the girl turned out NOT to be either setting up the hero as a chump or Dead Meat was, by not being the standard clichéd twist, a twist in itself.[/li]
[li]The reason you watch this movie is for the dialogue – and RDj’s execution of said dialogue.[/li][/ul]

[li]Robert Downey, Jr. is great. So great, in fact, that the acting of his co-stars looks all the worse in comparison, including Kilmer’s.[/li]
[li]The second time the film went “out of sync” was one time too many.[/li]
[li]My wife enjoyed the movie a lot less than I did, because she has trouble keeping up with fast-wit dialogue like this. It reminds me of The Thin Man movies, with its rapid-pace back-and-forth between the heroes. I had to pause the movie a few times just to laugh, so I didn’t miss the next lines.[/li]
[li]Last, there were scenes where RDj’s shakes and shivers and listlessness were clearly not from him channeling his off-screen self to make the character more believable, but rather his off-screen issues affecting his ability to act. [/li]
Come to think of it, I suspect a lot of the relative suckiness of the second half had as much to do with this as anything.
[/list]

I didn’t notice those scenes at all. Which ones are they?

[quote=“Rimbo”]
[li]The first 30 minutes of the movie are a lot better than the rest of it.[/li][/quote]

Nope.

[quote=“Rimbo”]
[li]I agree with the following comments made so far:
[/li]
[li]Val was great.[/li][/quote]

With you do far.

[quote=“Rimbo”]
[li]Robert Downey, Jr. is great. So great, in fact, that the acting of his co-stars looks all the worse in comparison, including Kilmer’s.[/li][/quote]

Whoah, Hoss, take it down a notch there. You’re gonna have to smudge out those other checks on your list if you want this one to stick.

[quote=“Rimbo”]
[li]My wife enjoyed the movie a lot less than I did, because she has trouble keeping up with fast-wit dialogue like this.[/li][/quote]

Why is that?

[quote=“Rimbo”]
[li]Last, there were scenes where RDj’s shakes and shivers and listlessness were clearly not from him channeling his off-screen self to make the character more believable, but rather his off-screen issues affecting his ability to act.[/li][/quote]

And yet he still trounced Kilmer et al on-screen? I don’t get it.

His performance? I thought you said it was fantastic. Seriously, you lost me somewhere.

Don’t quit your gay job.

It was only a couple of scenes, at about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through. I’m not sure why I picked up on it. I no longer have the copy of the movie I borrowed, so I can’t go back and look up where it was. :(

“No, knee-deep in pussy. I just love the name so much I can’t get rid of it.”

Is Shane Black doing anything else these days? He was such hot Hollywood property at one time, whatever happened to him?