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NICE GUYS      2.5***

         This 1977-set LA story starts with a  scene portraying the graphic automobile death of adult movie star named Misty Mountains. Later when Misty's aunt claims to have seen her niece alive, PI  Holland March( Ryan Gosling ) is hired to find her. Separately, Jackson Healey ( Russell Crowe)  is hired to stop him by force. A series of events conspire to bring the mismatched duo together, and off they go on a search for a missing girl named Amelia, the daughter of a sinister VIP from the Department of Justice (Kim Basinger).. There are a ton of bad guys standing in the way of their goal.  It's fair to say that March's and Healey's chaotic quest is propelled as much by luck as skill.

 Gosling and Crowe are cast  against their usual type: Gosling’s  icy cool and Crowe’s wounded warrior personas respectively.  They have good but not great chemistry.  Angourie Rice, playing Gosling’s precocious daughter Holly, almost steals the show from the stars. It's a great performance and a great character: she binds these two emotionally stunted men into being a good team whose individual strengths are made more effective.

“Nice Guys” was intended as a comedy/drama. I often find the best way to gauge a comedy is to see how many jokes actually get genuine laughs out of the audience. 'Nice Guys' failed that test. The number of pieces of intended humor that raised no sound at all were more plentiful than the ones that did. I laughed perhaps five times throughout the entire film and never once more than a quiet chuckle. 

A good but could’ve been better movie. Not worth theater’s prices. Wait and see it on TV.   

Rated R for violence, sexuality, nudity, language and brief drug use.

Clark