Kys Kys Bang Bang

Den her blog må leve, om den så skal gnaske på de forlængst komatøse tekster, jeg skrev i min ungdoms blomst. Revet op fra sin vegetative tilstand er således en anmeldelse af Downey Jr.'s meta-halløj "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang". Før Iron Man og det vilde comeback plejede Hollywoods yndlings-cokehead omgang med en erotisk buttet Val Kilmer. Anmeldelsen er på engelsk (af nød, ikke lyst), men jeg hører, engelsk er ved at få et comeback.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005)

Director: Shane Black
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan

All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. However, if you're Shane Black, a first time director equipped with the kind of Hollywood street smarts that come from having all four Lethal Weapon screenplays on your resume, you apparently don't want to just make a movie. You want to make a frantic clutter of cynically self-conscious film noir references, depict your glamorous workplace as not so much the city of angels as the final resting place for deluded gold-diggers and at the same time, you want to point out every narrative trick in the screenwriter's book by actually mock rewinding the film.

For that you need an extremely charming lead actor. Not to mention a chubby Val Kilmer dressed in jogging suits and attitude. Luckily, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang has both and therefore manages to keep the teeming meta-levels light and breezy and the plot holes covered. Although the latter is hard to judge upon first viewing, since the plot is confusing as hell.

Suffice to say, Robert Downey, Jr. is in intense pre-Iron Man mode as chronic fuck-up Harry Lockheart, who stumbles into a film audition after a failed burglary and is flown to Los Angeles with the prospect of starring in a detective film. In order to prepare for a screen test, he receives detective lessons from Kilmer's small time sleuth Gay Perry. That's where the guns start to show up. The girl comes in the shape of Harry's home-town sweetheart Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), who took the bus to Los Angeles years ago and never really made it. She thinks Harry is a real detective and has him investigate the apparent suicide of her sister. Cue more guns, now followed by bodies, all of it narrated by Harry himself in a nervous stream of consciousness.

The script sometimes veers from the clever remarks about the industry towards the fairly impenetrable ones that are too pointless to become cult. Most of the time, however, Shane Black concentrates on the fast-paced action and sarcastic banter that made Lethal Weapon good, with Downey, Jr. replacing Mel Gibson as a dopey, less insane Martin Riggs.

The best bits mix excitment with ridiculousness, like the scene where Lockheart is thrown off a bridge, but manages to grab a dead hand conveniently sticking out of a coffin which hangs halfway out onto the highway below.

Even better is a scene involving a finger and an argument, but you'll have to see that for yourself.