Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the funniest and most clever action flick I've seen in a while. As a matter of fact, it's not just clever, it's thoughtful. Writer-Director Shane Black, scribe of Lethal Weapon and The Last Action Hero, tells the story of petty crook/manipulated actor Harry Lockhart's (Robert Downey Jr.) trip to Los Angeles. The plot twists around Harry's relationships with ex-detective/current movie consultant "Gay" Perry (Val Kilmer), struggling actress Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), and the bodies that keep piling up around the trio. Black combines action, dark comedy, and noir effortlessly, frantically rushing through the murder mystery plot narrated by Harry.
The dialogue - whether comedic, dramatic, or pulpy - is downright decadent. It's as if Black can't wait to release his pent-up wit, so he unleashes it rapid-fire on the audience. Filled to the brim with memorable moments, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang necessitates constant pauses for laughter at ridiculous jokes ("Why in the pluperfect hell would you pee on a corpse!") or just pure observational genius (most of which are unprintable within the fine jurisdictions of wherever I'm writing for). The only time when Black's gift for snappy dialogue becomes a liability is in the establishment of Harry's character - while his narration usually matches his general stupidity, there are some moments where it becomes a little smarter than the narrator is shown to be. Black, supremely aware of the genre, gets laughs by putting new spins on action hero cliches. When Harry ditches a gun to hide evidence, it instead becomes evidence. When Harry attempts to intimidate a villain into talking through Russian Roulette, it becomes..... a cleanup problem. These characters have been so trained by movies on how to act in these crisis scenarios that when they adjust to a non-Hollywood reality, it's jarring and darkly funny.