On K List of Movie Reviews

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Rate: 2
Viewed: 5/21

5/21: The first fifteen minutes is usually a reliable indicator of how the film will go the rest of the way, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang went south this time.

I got fooled into seeing it because the cast included Val Kilmer. I thought his days of horrible 80's comedies were long behind him, but I was proved wrong. The same can be said of Robert Downey, Jr., too. He had a much longer streak of them than Val Kilmer. Again, I was wrong.

Yet the biggest surprise is that Shane Black wrote this homophobic piece of shit. This is the guy who did Lethal Weapon, The Monster Squad, and The Last Boy Scout with some uncredited contribution to Predator. He has a way with words while creating a bankable screenplay.

Well, nine years of going AWOL after the horribly-made The Long Kiss Goodnight, Shane Black managed to come up with something that's the most confusing of his career: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The dialogue is at once quick and hard to follow, demanding the expertise of top-shelf actors. Val Kilmer fits the bill, but Robert Downey, Jr., and Michelle Monaghan are wrong for it.

Making matters worse is the high amount of scenes that are either terrible, unbelievable, or pointless. A case in point is Harry who's thrown across the overpass until landing on the coffin. Despite his zero experience with guns, he's able to shoot at the bad guys perfectly from a great distance without ever reloading. At the same time, Harry is supposed to be physically weak because of his cut-off pinky finger. Yeah, okay.

All in all, because of Shane Black trying too hard to emulate the entertaining mess of The Big Sleep, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is suck suck bad bad.

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