Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
November 2nd 2008 12:36
“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is a fun comedic movie which is masquerading as a crime drama. This makes it interesting as the premise of Harry Lockhart, a petty criminal who runs into an audition for a crime show as he tries to escape from the police. When the scene cuts to a the new setting and he has been hired to work in a new crime show. With lessons from Val Kilmer’s character, affectionately known as Gay Perry, Harry soon becomes embroiled in a murder case involving Harry’s childhood crush, Michelle Monaghan’s Harmony Faith Lane’s sister. With the help of Gay Perry and Harmony, Harry slowly begins to piece the case together with subtle clues.
This film uses editing in several unorthodox ways. First of all it uses syncopated editing. This is a technique used in the French new wave cinema. What syncopated editing does is breaks away from continuity editing and does a free type of edit, where the timeline becomes scattered and out of order. An example of this is when Harry’s narration goes “Oh shit, I skipped something.” This is also the second point, which is the fourth-wall-breaking voice-over narration. This is when the actor seems to know that there is an audience that he is talking to. The fourth-wall is an old theatre technique where there would seemingly be a wall up in front of the stage, blocking the actors from the audience. The final editing technique used is its switchback chronology, which refers to switch in the story line so that it almost seem to turn around to go back the way it was coming from, for example, when Harry tell Perry that the corpse they had found had no underwear on, which put them on a road with no clues to solving the case.
This film moves at a hectic pace, with fast rambling humour and jokes that we wouldn’t get without the editing. Early on in the film, the editing is reflective. It goes back and explains the back story of the film in a disjointed way, but it still gets its point across. There is some very smart and witty banter between Perry and Harry including:
Perry: “Do you know what you'll find in the dictionary next to the word idiot?”
Harry: “My picture?”
Perry: “No. The definition of the word idiot, which is what you are.”
Harmony is a fan of the pulp private eye detective Jonny Gossamer. The murder ends up resembling on of the novels.
“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is a film which incorporates editing to set the story up and explain what is happening. The aim is then to make the speed of the movie as fast and polished as it can. This is helped by incredibly fast dialogue from Robert Downey Jr, Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan. But the undertone of the film is that it has been filmed already and Harry Lockhart is narrating it from his work desk. It is as if he is telling the story and only at the end does the camera look directly at him in the present tense.
"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is really good movie. The only thing is that it is confusing in some parts. But the dialogue is so funny and witty and engaging that you don't even mind. And Robert Downey is great in this role. I'd give ths movie 3 out of 5. I'd recommend this film for a bit of escapism.
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