Many might miss the clever and complexity involved in the “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” which get goes from the minute it opens on. And quite easily it can also be put in the common basket of slick, style and cool film. Its writing eloquence is top notch with a screenplay that would be a work as if David Mamet wrote a Guy Ritchie film. It has the ping pong type conversation and characters popping in wrong place, wrong time. It narrows a margin of comedy and in that it appears to be serious but it actually is not. It plays like a comedy film but has an edge of a thriller and when action comes down, it is fast and sweet with a stress on sweet. It is a fantasy in the shooting and even in its realistic portrayal, they erase the guilt with instant one liner by one liner. And you have Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer swing dancing their roles with fun and flair.The film is narrated as some one pitching the story for a studio executive only with a self aware cockiness and admittance. The narrator is the protagonist of the film, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.), a petty thief who gets into the show biz accidentally. For a part he got pulled in, the producer Dabney (Larry Miller) hires his PI “Gay” Perry (Val Kilmer) and yes he is gay. Harry meets his high school secret sweetheart and best friend Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) at the party and the film follows a topsy turvy trip in to the Los Angeles hotels, lakes, bars and left out houses.
Playing like film noir it mocks itself, stops the frame and reverses with the narrator admitting his inability to tell a story straight. In those where it could have been seen as a film trying too hard to be cool, it brings out laughs. Downey Jr.’s Harry is a man of chance rumbling down with the reality but never gets a hold of it. What can you say, he is a writer and he puts his coins where he wants to. Especially the violence is cartoonish and gives a feel of fantasy. We do not get marketed by it but those are like a plot elements which needs to happen so that we can get a noir film. It is filmed like a half baked screenplay and yet it is so well written and the hastiness of the things which unravels are interesting enough that we laugh about it. The best part it is when in the end the story mocks itself. It could have been fatal but it is about that right to make us giggle.
And what about those two, Downey Jr. and Kilmer. They are literally glee inside when they spit out those dialogues of insult and comic. They should have had fun or atleast they make us feel they had tons of it. In a true judgmental manner, Kilmer’s Perry is an embodiment of the Hollywood persona being a consultant for the films of crime, which is like every other movie. He is neatly dressed and appears clean and trim. He does not pose a macho look but bites the words towards Harry as this small time crook stumbling over mud and laughs sitting in the middle of it.
Monaghan joins this two and sizzles with a love - break tug of war with Harry. It is an investigative story of two murders. One involving Harmony’s little sister and Harry in the liking for Harmony declares himself as detective which makes her believe as both grew up going head over heels for crime novels. Apart from the fact of finding who the killer is, they want to suit as the novel characters and get into the action. Do not we all have that cornered stupid fantasy of growing up to be this detective and become that million dollar smile hero? Harry and Harmony have not grown up from that and they clinch this opportunity at every chance.
Shane Black’s screenplay is a great work. It is not alone written with the cliched smartness but a genuine liking for film noir. At the same time, he does not want to lose the reality of it. Hence he combines both and jokes how the noir gives an happy ending or fiction of good and bad clearly separated but reminding that life is not like that. He builds a screenplay inside this film and gets the good works of the performers.
“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is also a sad reminding factor that films which becomes a public appeal loses its charm of critical value. It has descended to the fact that great films rarely are acknowledged by the public or more worse is the genre itself. When I say genre, the idea of comedy does not appear to be a serious contender for great films. I have advocated this attitude many times and it happened in me quite subconsciously watching this film. I never cared to mention the creativeness in the screenplay as I begin to treat it as a blockbuster entertainment of newly found charm of cool films. In couple of moments I realized how much the system has got into me. Throw the system away and not alone enjoy the film but think back the work went on with the writing. It will blow your mind.
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