‘The Nice Guys’ surprises with laughs

The surprises rather have to do with unexpected lines or sight gags topped by other lines and sight gags.

An action comedy, it doesn’t have a great movie’s half-life, and it doesn’t produce that great movie glow.

[...] its constant invention and originality are indeed great, and so is the pleasure they produce.

Along with co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi, Black creates in “The Nice Guys” an atmosphere that allows for farce, slapstick, silly wordplay and genuine and weirdly effective sentiment.

There’s no dead time, no scenes that are merely functional, there to set up other scenes.

Russell Crowe is Healy, a genial strong-arm guy for hire, who works for himself, eking out a living breaking arms and punching people in the face.

Set in 1978, it captures the 1970s milieu, not just with the cars and the clothes, but with a story that involves a series of murders within the fringes of the porn industry.

Gosling is the comic — mostly, but not always, the idiot — and Crowe is the straight man, and the two work well enough together that a sequel seems inevitable.

(Black’s first screenplay was for “Lethal Weapon,” which became a franchise.) But Angourie Rice, who plays Gosling’s intelligent and highly moral 12-year-old, deserves a special mention.