Traditional Christmas Movies: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

It’s Christmas, and two-bit crook Harry Lockhart stumbles into an audition for a movie while he’s running from the cops. Winning the part, he lands in Hollywood, where he's flung headlong into a murderous conspiracy that involves his childhood sweetheart, Harmony Lane, now a wanna-be actress, and a hard-boiled private eye known as “Gay” Perry van Shrike.

Christmastime means Christmas films, and here are some of my favorites! Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is not only a fantastic example of a traditional Christmas film, but it’s also the third and final movie appearing on this list that were written by Shane Black, the King of Christmas.

Taken from the French word meaning 'darkness' or 'of the night,' noir stories are generally darker in theme and subject matter, told in pared back prose, heavy on the sex and violence, and often heavily overlap with hardboiled detective fiction. The lead is usually an outsider or an outcast, and definitely no hero, and the story is often told from their point of view. There’s a real sense of nihilism to everything, noir stories are often set in the American Dream gone bad, highlighted by the fact that they usually start with a dead body or a missing person. There’s the Femme Fatale, of course, and a lot of time spent “on the streets” which could be a shadowy alley or a dark country road, as long as it’s “out amongst the people,” especially if they’re the local “creatures of the night.” In the end, noir stories are stories of broken hearts, broken dreams, and broken noses, with no happy endings. No one gets out clean, as they say.

L.A. Noir stories have all of these elements, but y’know… it’s sunny.

There’s palm trees.

“Inspired” by the novel “Bodies Are Where You Find Them” by Brett Halliday, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a L.A. Noir story set in Hollywood and narrated by Harry Lockhart, a small-time New York thief turned would-be actor, who has been flown out to Los Angeles, and is taking Private Eye lessons for a potential role from a local PI named “Gay” Perry.

While at a Hollywood party, Harry happens upon Harmony Lane. A million years ago, she was his crush from the small town in Indiana they both hail from, a town that she left at 16 years of age because of her abusive father.

For his first PI lesson, Perry takes Harry on a stakeout, where they see a car being dumped in a lake, and find a dead woman in the trunk, who they accidentally shoot in the head. A series of mishaps leads them to decide not to report what they have found, creating a cascade of events involving Harmony’s missing sister, a couple of corpses, a murder, a suicide, a pair of loquacious hit men, and a conspiracy that involves secret parentage, a mental hospital, some fraud, and a stolen identity, all of which leads to torture, some shoot-outs, another corpse or two, and Harry accidentally getting his finger chopped off, which a dog later eats.

In the end, it’s all wrapped up with a nice little bow.

Thus saving Christmas…

Gay Perry: “Look up idiot in the dictionary. You know what you'll find?”

Harry: “…a picture of me?”

Gay Perry: “No! The definition of the word idiot! Which you fucking are!”

Like with most of Shane Black’s films, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is set at Christmas, and there’s also a lot of hard-boiled banter, one-liners, non sequiturs and riddles, all flung back and forth with dizzying speeds between Kilmer and Downey. The two are really great together, just pure chemistry. I wish we could’ve seen them together in more things. Harmony is played by Michelle Monaghan, who acquits herself nicely against these two, which is really impressive. She’s the perfect third.

Still, the fact that Harmony and Harry are supposed to be the same age is a pretty tough pill to swallow.

The film has a lot of fun with itself and its storytelling structure, and it often calls itself out when it employs the familiar tricks and tropes of the noir genre, which it uses faithfully, because even if it’s self-aware, it’s still a classic noir story from top to bottom. Now, some people might role their eyes at the film’s regular knowing winks, but the main trio’s charm is more than enough to smooth over any plot/script issues. The same goes for the humor, because this is a really funny movie. Some folks might consider some of that humor to be a little dark, like the peeing on the corpse gag, but not all of it is, like the really great spider-on-the-boob gag.

So, there’s something for everyone.

Perry: [to the audience] “Thanks for coming, please stay for the end credits, if you're wondering who the Best Boy is, it's somebody's nephew. Um… don't forget to validate your parking, and to all you good people in the Midwest, sorry we said fuck so much.”

Same, Perry.

Same.