Michael Fairbanks
Shane Black’s buddy comedy The Nice Guys (2016) has become a cult classic because it executes nearly all of its standard genre elements perfectly. Ryan Gosling’s Holland March and Russell Crowe’s Jackson Healy are one of the all time great comedic duos. They are both incompetent in the exact opposite ways to grind on each other’s nerves until they ultimately find their groove and connection. The mystery seems like a boilerplate search for a missing girl at first but ultimately winds its way into a buck wild search for a porno movie that is secretly an arthouse political protest piece. It’s hilarious, hyper violent, and perfectly paced. However, the element that has cemented this as a masterpiece in my personal canon as I’ve watched it over and over again for the past ten years is the offbeat connection between Gosling’s bumbling PI Holland March and his teenage daughter Holly (Angourie Rice). It is one of my favorite depictions of fatherhood ever put to film.
Usually, hard-nosed detectives view their spouses and children as inconveniences. They’re distractions that keep their eyes off the case. However, Holland March is no ordinary detective. He’s a broken man whose wife died in a house fire because he was unable to smell the gas. The “cases” he takes on are mostly grifts to make easy money and distract from the pain of it all. He doesn’t grift out of malice. It’s simply the only type of work that his fried mind is capable of doing. We meet him as he pathetically lies in a bathtub with a full suit on, looking at a hand tattoo that says “you will never be happy.” His only chance at happiness is Holly, who startles him awake with a phone call to remind him that he does in fact have work that day.
Black plays with a long held notion that some daughters have to mature early and raise their emotionally illiterate fathers. It would be easy to hate Holland because of how irresponsible he is. Holly is well aware. At one low point, where Holly has to drive him back home, he asks if he’s a bad father to which Holly responds “Yes.” She also at one point insists that he’s “the world’s worst detective,” and it’s hard to argue. However, despite that tension, their dynamic quickly reveals itself as deeply sweet and caring in nature. Holland may not be a respectable guiding light for Holly but he never lashes out at her for it. In fact, he embraces her more sincerely than any other aspect of his life. He speaks to her like an adult, tolerates her friends enough to take them bowling (except for Janet, whom he can’t stand) and ultimately comes to her rescue whenever she is in danger. It’s an imperfect and fraught dynamic, but it is never hard to watch. Even when they bicker, they are two equals who are helping each other heal from tragedy.
Holland is constantly thinking of Holly even when she isn’t around. At one point, Holland, Jackson and an informant come across a scummy teenage boy who gives them some exposition about why a house with the porno film burned down. At the end he gets snarky and asks them if they want to see his dick. In perhaps my favorite moment in the entire film, it then cuts to Holland and Jackson driving at night as Holland incredulously recites “DO YOU WANT TO SEE MY DICK??!” in utter disbelief. He opines that the days of ladies and gentlemen are over as Jackson stoically lets him rant. Holland’s deep investment in Holly is one of the first things that starts to make Jackson realize that this guy might not be a complete degenerate idiot after all.
Holly even finds ways to become close to Jack throughout the film. He’s initially endeared to her when she lets him bum one of her YooHoo milks but as they are forced to spend more time together, Holly starts to melt his cold heart. Up to this point, Jackson has lived life as a brutal enforcer. People pay to have him beat people up and ultimately if he needs to kill somebody, he will. Holly keys into this early on and finds it impossible to reconcile with a man who has shown her nothing but warmth and kindness. Eventually, Holly starts to view Jackson as a pseudo uncle, ultimately revealing to him the tragic reason her mother died and not so subtly encouraging him to give her father a chance to prove himself competent enough to solve the mystery they’re faced with. Eventually, she gives Jackson an ultimatum. If he kills someone else, they will never speak again. It’s enough for Jackson to resist doing exactly that during his final showdown with Matt Bomer’s slimy enforcer.
Angourie Rice is not given nearly enough credit for just how much she contributes to The Nice Guys. It is one of the best performances that an actor her age has ever delivered in this type of film. Holly never becomes a precocious child who is tacked onto this movie as a distraction. Rice ensures that she is just as sharp and funny as Gosling and Crowe. It’s remarkable just how well she holds the screen opposite these two vastly older and more experienced performers who could’ve easily been holding her hand through this. Holly eventually starts taking a shine to the detective work herself, especially when she helps infiltrate a party full of porn stars (to Holland’s sheer horror) in search of information about the missing Amelia (Margaret Qualley). As she chats up these stoners watching dirty movies on the couch, we completely believe that she is confident enough for these people not to brush her off. Black also knows exactly when to cool his jets even within The Nice Guys’ gritty world. It would’ve been very easy to contrive a reason for Holly to find herself in a sexually violent situation at this party or be seriously injured during the several action sequences she’s involved in. Instead, she gets to float through the film without being traumatized, allowing us to enjoy everything that she gets to do within this very adult world.
I cannot help but imagine how we could’ve watched Holly grow in hypothetical sequels to The Nice Guys that will likely never come. Perhaps in the second film she would’ve gone to college in an attempt to find her own identity away from Holland, only to be drawn back in for whatever reason. A third film could’ve found her either co-running a Nice Guys agency with Jackson and Holland or perhaps even going out on her own to take on cases she’s passionate about. Usually, when buddy cop movies become franchises, there’s no real growth connecting the different films beyond “we’re friends now, unlike in the first one.” Holly could’ve been the key to tracking that evolution over the course of a Nice Guys franchise, making it something truly unique in a sea of similar stories. Now it seems like a pipe dream even to pray for one nostalgic return for these three characters. Perhaps when we hit the 20-year mark.
While The Nice Guys is perhaps an unconventional choice for Father’s Day viewing, I’d highly recommend it as such. It is all too rare to watch cinematic fathers express care and affection for their children without some form of reluctance. They either have to be coaxed into it by their partners or forced into it through tragedy. Yes, Holland and Holly are connected through the loss of Holly’s mother, but not begrudgingly. In a genre that often forbids emotion, we watch a vulnerable man have to reconcile with the fact that trying to be his daughter’s best friend still isn’t enough to raise her well. We end the film with him finding a new sense of purpose, symbolized by the “never” in his hand tattoo being wiped off during the violent events of the film’s climax. Yes, his partnership with Jackson drives that purpose, but it’s also the general urge to be more present and engaged with his day to day life. Being a father is what makes that newfound will to live worth it.
