Few Hollywood stars have managed to bounce back from hard times as successfully as Robert Downey, Jr. did in the late 2000s. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, roles in films like Weird Science, Less Than Zero, Chaplin, and Short Cuts made Downey an acclaimed star, but his career hit a rough patch when his highly publicized substance abuse and legal troubles made him uninsurable. Downey struggled to find steady work for a few years, but within a decade, he’d be headlining the most popular movie franchise in the world. After making his debut as Tony Stark in 2008, Downey made Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He’s since become one of the most sought-after stars in Hollywood, able to command a $50 million salary for a single film. But Downey’s legendary career comeback didn’t start with Iron Man; it began back in 2005 with a starring role in Shane Black’s neo-noir comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Black had earned a reputation as one of the most prominent action screenwriters in Tinseltown – and one of the pioneers of the “buddy cop” genre – with his scripts for movies like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. He didn’t try his hand at directing until nearly two decades into his career, but after working with such masterful filmmakers as Richard Donner, Tony Scott, and Renny Harlin, he was ready for the challenge. Loosely adapted from the novel Bodies Are Where You Find Them by Brett Halliday, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a delightfully stylish debut feature that puts a satirical, tongue-in-cheek spin on all the tropes and conventions of the film noir genre.
Downey stars as actor Harry Lockhart alongside Val Kilmer as private eye “Gay Perry” van Shrike in a classic “buddy cop” pairing to rival Riggs and Murtaugh. The movie begins in New York with Harry fleeing the scene after his friend is killed in a robbery gone awry. He runs from the cops, stumbles into an audition, and unwittingly scores a screen test in Los Angeles when his raw emotion is mistaken for method acting. In order to get into the mindset of his character, he’s tasked with shadowing Perry on the job. When they witness a corpse being dumped in a lake during a stakeout, the two are drawn into a criminal conspiracy that involves Harry’s childhood crush, a retired movie star, and a pair of goons known as Mr. Frying Pan and Mr. Fire.
As with any “buddy cop” movie, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is carried by its leads’ chemistry. Downey and Kilmer are perfectly matched in the roles of Harry and Perry. They bring Black’s signature snappy dialogue to life with the comic energy it deserves. Their back-and-forth in every scene is priceless, like when Harry confesses to accidentally splashing the corpse when he found it in his bathroom mid-urination: “I peed on the corpse. Can they do, like, ID from that?” “I’m sorry, you peed on...?” “On the corpse. My question is...” “No, my question, I get to go first: why in pluperfect hell would you pee on a corpse!?” Downey and Kilmer’s timing is spot-on and they each commit wholeheartedly to the lunacy of the pitch-black gags.
Not only is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang a classic example of a film noir; it devilishly deconstructs all the familiar hallmarks. It’s not just a standard detective story, because the detective is joined by a novice seeking detective lessons. Much to his chagrin, the short-tempered Perry has to explain every step of the case to the dim-witted crook-turned-actor who comes along for the ride. Like many noir antiheroes, Harry carries the story through voiceover narration. But Harry’s snarky voiceovers don’t just help with the telling of the story; he breaks the fourth wall to address the audience directly. He often criticizes his own narration skills, then quips, “I don’t see another g****** narrator, so pipe down.”
Considering it was his first time in the director’s chair, Black exhibits expert command of the filmmaking form. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is full of conflicting tones and genres. It’s a grisly neo-noir, a buddy comedy, a romantic melodrama, and a meditation on trauma, and Black ably juggles all these disparate elements. There’s plenty of screwball banter, high-octane gunplay, and startlingly realistic takes on trite movie clichés. Black pulls it all together by focusing on Harry’s relationships with the other characters: his burgeoning friendship with Perry and his reignited romance with his childhood crush.
While Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a self-aware, sharply subversive satire of a well-worn genre anchored by two powerhouse performances by beloved movie stars, it sadly failed to catch on with audiences and bombed at the box office. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Downey was as disappointed as anyone by the film’s commercial underperformance, noting that “it wasn’t the coming-out party I’d thought it would be.” But it was Downey’s performance as Harry Lockhart that caught the eye of Jon Favreau when he was casting the role of Tony Stark, and the actor came to attribute Kiss Kiss Bang Bang as “my calling card to Iron Man.” Downey eventually repaid the favor to Black when he recruited him to co-write and direct Iron Man 3.