" Don't say 'and stuff'."
Another in the line of most entertaining Shane Black films, this one co-written with Anthony Bagarozzi (his only film credit), and featuring the superb deadpan comedy of Ryan Gosling (Russell Crowe acts straight alongside, which is correct).
Young Angourie Rice provides the intelligent and moral centre of the film, which in itself is an unusual and welcome thing.
With Margaret Qualley, Yaya da Costa, Matt Bomer ('John Boy', was in The Normal Heart and we saw him a bit in The Last Tycoon), Keith David, Lois Smith, Kim Basinger.
Shot by Phillippe Rousselot, edited by Joel Negron (Sleepy Hollow, the 2010 Karate Kid, Cocaine Bear), music by David Buckley and John Ottman.
Bagarozzi is apparently involved in a Road House remake, which featured in a conversation that night about really bad films that are fun (e.g. And Then There were None).
This marks the beginning of our Ryan Gosling retrospective, triggered by a Sky Arts documentary, in which Sunday Times critic Stephen Armstrong notes that the death of Gosling's character's wife in this carries a weight of melancholy in even his slapstick moments - something which I did not find at all. Fortunately, I am not a film critic.
(Well, I am, in a way, I suppose.)
It's with a heavy heart that I see Black's upcomings are two remakes - Doc Savage and Play Dirty - and a sequel, Lethal Weapon 5.
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