Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

a Shane Black film Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival May 14,2005 Blaine: One of my top favorite comedies is “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”. The humor in it is so hilarious I laugh out loud. It has rude humor,that’s what makes me laugh the most.

Plot (Spoiler Alert)

Harry Lockhart finds his way into Los Angeles after passing an audition which was a cover up because he was trying to hide from the police after robbing a toy store. He has to take detective lessons for the part and an investigator who goes by the name of Gay Perry teaches him. He then finds himself to be a part of an investigation for they witnessed a vehicle being dumped into a lake with a dead woman in the back of the trunk. Harry and Perry leave the seen of the crime, but it isn’t long till Harry finds the dead body in his hotel room. The people who caused the murder are framing Harry. Perry and Harry get rid of the body before the police find it. They place it somewhere in the streets of Los Angeles. The next morning the woman is revealed to be the daughter of a retired Hollywood actor, Harlan Dexter. Harry runs into his childhood friend Harmony Lane. She works in Los Angeles and asks for Harry’s help to investigate her sister’s death. Harry later discovers that Harmony’s sister was the one who hired Perry to investigate the murder they stumbled upon. Harmony’s sister came to LA looking for what she believed was her real father, Harlan Dexter, because Harmony told her stories about her father leading to Dexter in order to cheer her up. Harry, Perry and Harmony work together to investigate the Dexter case.

Blaine: Shane Black is best known for being the creator of “Lethal Weapon” and I never could get into those as much as “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”. Shane didn’t like what the studio was doing with his creation through the third and fourth film because they were turning “Lethal Weapon” into a comedy that is not Shane’s type and they were adding too many characters. Shane took it easy after “Lethal Weapon 2”. He was getting a lot of attention for wrong reasons and that was writing screenplays just for money. People were also thinking of him as someone who writes action movies when really he doesn’t like action movies that much and his templet is the 60s and early 70s.

Two years later Shane returned to the movie studios with “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”, but the problem was the executives didn’t know who Shane was and they rejected his screenplay without even reading it. Other studios Shane went to, thought of him for only making action blockbusters and they couldn’t understand why he wanted to make a movie like “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”, plus he never had any experience directing a film in the past. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is Shane Black’s first directorial debut. Warner Brothers was kinder to Shane and with the help of producer Joel Silver, who Shane has known since ’86, he was able to get the approval to make “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”. Joel always thought Shane was a talented and interesting fellow after he met him in 1986 and he loved Shane Black’s script after he read it.

Shane thought making a movie like this would be fun enough and low budget enough that it would serve a good entree into directing. Shane felt that directing “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” was serving the script. Shane Black’s movies “Lethal Weapon”, “The Long Kiss Goodnight” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" have one thing in common and that is they take place during Christmas time. My guess is that Shane really loves Christmas.

The actors (Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan) trusted Shane Black enough that he knew what he was doing sense this was his first directorial debut. Val Kilmer said that Shane was always prepared on what he wanted. There is so much in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” that makes me laugh hard. The way the characters move like with Gay Perry pointing at Harry while having a finger on his nose because they’re on to something and Harry going in quickly to punch the black guy with his gun as a revenge for hitting him first.

John Silver had produced a couple of movies with Robert Downey Jr. in them and it was his idea to cast Robert as Harry Lockhart. Shane said that Robert Downey Jr. narrating the movie works perfectly. The sounds Robert makes are hilarious like when Harry and Perry witness the car jumping into the lake, he goes “O!” And then there’s the scene where he goes “Yeah!” after Gay Perry kills a bad guy with a small pistol where his crotch is.

I don’t think much of Val Kilmer as Batman, but I love him as Gay Perry. What I love the most about Gay Perry is that he’s not like other gay guys because he’s supposed to be the tuff guy and he says insulting things. It’s funny how Gay Perry calls Harry an idiot in that gay voice. Val had wanted to be in comedy for a while and he was very grateful “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” came his way because the script was so unique to him. Michelle Monaghan saw her character, Harmony, as a woman who is incredibly strong, smart, sad, vulnerable, someone who does a lot of action, qualities you don’t usually get to see in Hollywood. She also said the words on Shane Black’s script are what actors dream of. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" was one of Michelle’s first leading roles. Laurence Fishburne makes a cameo through his voice as the bear handing out Genaros beer in a tv commercial and he’s also the narrator of it as well.

My rating on “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is five out of five stars.

Music

Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer kissing Michelle Monaghan’s cheeks at Cannes

Val Kilmer, Robert Downey Jr. and Shane Black