Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

The Nice Guys Blu-ray Movie Review

Boogie Knights

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 22, 2016

There's not much "nice" about either of the two sad sacks who find themselves thrown together in The Nice Guys. Writer/director Shane Black specializes in mismatched pairings whose feuds are at least as entertaining as whatever mystery they're trying to solve. As a writer, he gave us the suicidal Riggs and the retirement-conflicted Murtagh, whose partnership proved so popular that the Lethal Weapon franchise survived even Black's own attempt to end it after the second film. He followed up by teaming Bruce Willis' dysfunctional private eye with Damon Wayons' disgraced football star in The Last Boy Scout, and Geena Davis' soccer mom-cum-sleeper agent with Samuel L. Jackson's feckless shamus in The Long Kiss Goodnight. In Black's 2005 directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he combined Val Kilmer and Robert Downey, Jr., in a deft parody of his own buddy formula (not to mention the cliches of the modern action film that he helped to create), but the film sputtered at the box office, garnering a belated fan base on home video. The Nice Guys also disappointed in theaters, but I suspect it too will enjoy a healthy afterlife, as a larger audience tunes into its goofy vibe.

The year is 1977. Newspapers issue regular warnings of the imminent arrival of "killer bees" from South America. The now-defunct Tower Records is a thriving chain. Filling up your gas tank means waiting in line for hours because of rationing (an anachronism, to be sure, but true to the period). The City of Angels is choking on smog, with daily alerts warning citizens to limit their outdoor activities. As if the air quality weren't already bad enough, cigarette smoking remains rampant and unrestricted to designated areas. Polyester clothing and neon-bright decor are standard issue. The sounds of funk and disco fill the airwaves.

In this miasma of bad air and bad taste, an unlikely partnership is forged between Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) and Holland March (Ryan Gosling). Healy is a divorced, heavy-set enforcer who, for a price, will scare or intimidate whomever the client desires, maybe breaking a bone or two in the process. March is a widowed, alcoholic P.I. who specializes in scamming his clients. They are brought together by a mystery woman, Amelia (Margaret Qualley), whom March is tailing for a case but who, suspecting the detective of nefarious motives, hires Healy to warn him off. Amelia has a murky connection to a porn star known as "Misty Mountains" (Murielle Telio), who has been reported dead but whose distraught aunt (Lois Smith) believes she is still alive and has hired March to find her. Misty's latest porno—excuse me: "experimental film"—seems to have vanished. Whatever was on the film, a trio of colorful hitmen (Keith David, Matt Bomer and Beau Tally) are pursuing everyone involved with it, and an evasive official from the Justice Department (Kim Basinger) has taken more than a professional interest in the case.

The key to enjoying The Nice Guys is to treat it as a period piece, a homage (or maybe a parody; it's a thin line) to the peculiar mixture of pollution and licentious glitz that characterized L.A. in the Seventies. The film's very opening, with its vintage Warner Bros. logo and driving instrumental lick from The Temptations' 1971 cover of "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone", serves as a winking cue that what follows is as much an idealized evocation of a bygone era as Chinatown's Thirties or L.A. Confidential's Fifties—except that this one is played for laughs, even when it's violent (which it frequently is). Like the heroes of those earlier neo-noir classics, Healy and March blunder into a web of sinister machinations by powerful forces attempting to determine the city's future, except that the evil plot, when it's finally revealed, is hardly the work of a criminal mastermind. It's more like the bonkers scheme of the villain in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, who invents the L.A. freeway system where "traffic jams will be a thing of the past".

Crowe and Gosling are both intriguing playing against type, and Black has given them plenty of off-kilter dialogue, silly arguments and opportunities for physical comedy. He has also provided a diverting foil in March's precocious teenage daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), whose disapproval of her father's deceptive business practices doesn't stop her from barging into his investigations. It's the same device that Black employed so effectively in The Last Boy Scout, except that here the daughter isn't a foul-mouthed brat. At times, she seems like the most mature member of the group.

The Nice Guys Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Nice Guys was shot digitally (on both Alexa and Red, according to IMDb) by the great French cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (an Oscar winner for A River Runs Through It), whose lighting alternates between the rich palette and deep blacks of neo-noir and the neon glow of Seventies celebration; the latter is most vividly observed in the extended party/orgy sequence when Healy and March visit a porn producer's palatial hilltop home. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray sports a consistently sharp and detailed image that brings out every crag in the face of Russell Crowe's Healy and every wrinkle in Ryan Gosling's perpetually disheveled March. Densities and contrast are consistently excellent, and no aliasing, banding or other anomalies were observed. Warner has mastered The Nice Guys at an average bitrate of 27.65 Mbps, which is higher than usual for the theatrical division and hopefully represents a trend.

The Nice Guys Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Nice Guys's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, provides the expected punch and power of a contemporary action film that includes gunplay, car chases and hand-to-hand combat. The surrounds come alive whenever the action ramps up, providing subtle environmental cues in quieter scenes. The dialogue is always clear and well-positioned, which is especially important with a script that often takes verbal detours for a comic grace note (when was the last time you heard an exchange that turned on the rhyming pronunciation of "Munich" and "eunuch"?). David Buckley and John Ottman, the same team that scored the current Jason Bourne, supplied the period-flavored action score, but the highlights of the soundtrack are the many period-specific hits, which range from The Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'" to America's "Horse with No Name" to Rupert Holmes's "The Piña Colada Song", which wasn't released until two years after the film is set, one of the film's many small anachronisms—but who cares? If you were around for the Seventies, the soundtrack is a trip down memory lane. If you weren't, it's a sonic time capsule.

The Nice Guys Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras are disappointingly slim, consisting of two brief EPK-like featurettes.

• Always Bet on Black (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:27): This featurette focuses on writer/director Shane Black, with contributions from the principal cast, producer Joel Silver, co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi and Black himself.



• Worst. Detectives. Ever. Making The Nice Guys (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:16): This featurette traces the history of the project through its many incarnations and provides an overview of the main characters.



• Trailers: The film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays trailers for War Dogs, The Legend of Tarzan, The Conjuring 2, Batman: The Killing Joke and the usual Warner promo for digital copies, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

The Nice Guys Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If The Nice Guys had been more successful, Warner might have sprung for more than token extras. It would have been interesting, for example, to explore production designer Richard Bridgland's transformation of downtown Atlanta into Seventies L.A., or Kym Barrett's costume designs, or the musicians who reincarnate Earth, Wind & Fire performing at a lavish party. But the film's the thing, and Warner's Blu-ray presents it well. Highly recommended.