Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a down-on-his-luck private eye in 1977 Los Angeles. Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is a hired enforcer who hurts people for a living. Fate turns them into unlikely partners after a young woman named Amelia (Margaret Qualley) mysteriously disappears. Healy and March soon learn the hard way that some dangerous people are also looking for Amelia. Their investigation takes them to dark places as anyone else who gets involved in the case seems to wind up dead.
"The wacky mayhem continues from there, cynical and yet somehow more or less sympathetic, with an impressive hit rate of gags and one-liners, with the ambient feelgood factor periodically boosted with party scenes and 70s soundtrack album material. An innocent pleasure."
"There are gasoline lines and a running joke about “The Waltons,” but the era is evoked mainly through musical cues, details of production and costume design and allusions to other films..."
"“The Nice Guys” is an ultra-violent burlesque, the sort of cheerfully hostile buddy bash that’s been a staple since the ’80s, only this one is singularly clever about its own triviality, and it offers the scruffy pleasure of seeing two great actors dial down their gravitas with style."