The Nice Guys

The Nice Guys is the best buddy comedy of the 2010s — a 1970s Los Angeles noir about a private detective and a hired enforcer investigating a missing girl, which spirals into a conspiracy involving the auto industry, the porn industry, and the Department of Justice. Shane Black, who invented the buddy action comedy with Lethal Weapon, returned to the genre and produced his finest work since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Ryan Gosling's revelation as a physical comedian is the film's secret weapon. His Holland March is a cowardly, alcoholic, incompetent detective whose screams of terror — particularly the bathroom stall scene — are the funniest sounds any dramatic actor has ever produced. Russell Crowe's Jackson Healy is the muscle with a heart of gold, and their chemistry is instant and effortless. Angourie Rice, as March's precocious daughter Holly, steals every scene she is in.

The 1970s setting allows Black to satirize an era when the American auto industry was actively suppressing environmental regulation — a conspiracy so absurd it happens to be true. The film bombed at the box office because Warner Bros. did not know how to market an R-rated original buddy comedy in the franchise era. Its cult following has grown every year since, and it remains one of the great injustices of modern cinema that we never got a sequel.