Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

What’s the Story?

Set in Los Angeles, KISS KISS BANG BANG centers on Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.), thief who inadvertently stumbles into a screen test and gets a role as a private detective. As research for the role, Gary spends time with a real P.I., Gay Perry (Val Kilmer). Things start to get out of hand for Harry and Perry when a mysterious client sets them up to witness some men dumping a body in a lake. And then there's the girl...Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan). Harry's in love with her but hasn't seen her since they were kids. Harmony, Harry, and Perry are brought together by the deaths of two young girls, one of whom is Harmony's sister. Were both deaths murders or was one a suicide? What motive would anyone have to kill either one of the girls? And why do scary men with guns seem to turn up everywhere? These are the questions that move the film along its fast-paced storyline.

Is It Any Good?

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a fragmented and jumpy flick fraught with beautiful people, comic books, and violence. Robert Downey Jr. is fun to watch, but he plays the neurotic, caring Harry the way some people might play a dope fiend. His character can be touching and sincere, but at the same time, he doesn't seem real. As Gay Perry, Val Kilmer delivers crude, self-deprecating one-liners about being homosexual, which he seems to flaunt out of resentment. His character lacks the nuance necessary to make him believable. Harmony is the strongest and most interesting character in the movie, but we're given enough of her past to hold our interest, then her storyline falls apart into choppy confusion.

The film is entertaining at times but lacks something that would make it a great movie. It tries to be hip, but hip is more than snazzy lines told by flippant, sexy people who shoot each other. A little more substance and care, and this movie would have been much better.