Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ★★★½ 2005 (R)
Making his directorial debut, Black—the screenwriter responsible for such awesome cinematic machismo as “Lethal Weapon” and “Last Boy Scout”—reinvents crime noir with this hilarious riff on hardboiled detective fiction and vapid LA culture. Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr.) is a two-bit thief who stumbles into an acting audition after a robbery gone wrong. The producers fly him to Hollywood where he takes private eye lessons from a gay PI named Perry (Kilmer) and gets embroiled in a complicated conspiracy involving a dead body and a femme fatale from his past (Monaghan). Kilmer and Downey have never been funnier, thanks to Black's sharp-as-a-laser dialogue, and Monaghan is insanely easy on the eyes. Sam Spade never had it this good. 103m/C DVD, Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD . US Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen, Dash Mihok, Larry Miller, Shannyn Sossamon, Angela Lindvall, Rockmond Dunbar; D: Shane Black; W: Shane Black; C: Michael Barrett; M: John Ottman.