Shane Black and the Broken Action Hero Spoilers

"Look up the word idiot in the dictionary, you know what you'll find?"

"A picture of me?"

"No! The definition of the word idiot, which you fucking are!"

I mean, come on. How can you not love this shit?

Over the last decade or so, I've developed a borderline unhealthy obsession with the action comedies of Shane Black. Especially Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3, and, my favourite movie of all time, The Nice Guys.

Each of these films is a slick, witty, action crime comedy, with a nuclear reactor's worth of energy packed into the screenplay. They are also, in my opinion, damn near perfect.

I've lost count of the times I rewatched them. If I ever had trouble sleeping, I used to recite the words of The Nice Guys in my head until I drifted off. Like I said, borderline unhealthy. Every time I revisit these movies, I find some new line to obsess over, or another visual gag I missed.

I love them so much that I make everyone I meet watch them too. And you know what? No one has ever complained. I got my mom hooked on The Nice Guys when I was 14, and I haven't made it more than 2 months into a new friendship without suggesting Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for movie night.

Shane Black basically invented the modern buddy movie when he wrote the screenplay for Lethal Weapon, so it's especially fascinating to see how, once he had the chance to write and direct his own movies, Black breaks down and reconstructs the same tropes that he helped to create. His action comedies are self-aware without being kitschy; they take classic movie logic and twist it into labyrinthine mysteries.

But my favourite thing about them is the way that they break the idea of the action hero.

Who do you think of when you think, "action star?" Probably somebody like Stallone or even Jason Statham. A no-nonsense tough guy who looks great holding a machine gun and would fit right in in an Expendables movie. But the heroes of a Shane Black action flick aren't suave or sexy. They don't spit one-liners and they definitely aren't fearless in the face of danger.

Most of the time, they're kind of pathetic.

Take Harry Lockhart, a petty criminal who literally stumbles into a life of acting after a robbery-gone-wrong. Once he gets mixed up in some big city scandal in L.A., Harry bumbles around the city, succeeding more by coincidence than by any discernible skill or competence. He ends the movie sans one finger, with no acting career, and the bad guy got what he wanted.

Or try Holland March. He's a washed-up alcoholic detective, scamming senior citizens out of money to make a living. By the end of the movie the girl he was hired to protect is dead, the system he wanted to take down hasn't changed, and he's still, as his daughter would say, a fuck-up.

But hey, at least by the end of their respective movies, both these guys have made a new friend.

You might think Iron Man would be the odd man out here. No sir. In Iron Man 3 Tony Stark is a non-communicative dick who gives his address to a terrorist group on live television. Black is actually one of the few people who has managed to keep some semblance of his artistic identity intact while making a Marvel movie. His rapid-fire dialogue combined with a back-and-forth between Tony Stark and James Rhodes would fit right in with any of his other films, as would the Christmastime setting and the utterly tragic backstory. Remember how Iron Man 3 is about Tony Stark dealing with PTSD in the wake of The Avengers?

No sweat, neither did I at first.

But that's kind of the magic behind these movies. These tragicomic protagonists should be impossible to watch, let alone root for, but Black makes them loveable by exploiting their everyman qualities. You don't even notice how sad the movies really are, because you're too busy having a great fucking time. Or I am, at least.

At the start of The Nice Guys, Ryan Gosling has a note written on his hand that says 'You will never be happy," but I can't focus on his existential dread when I'm watching him narrowly avoid death and give one of my top 3 movie screams of all time (see the clip coming up). It's just math.

Aside from being charming, Black's protagonists tend to be pretty reprehensible, and if they were your stereotypical action hero, I don't think I'd care at all whether they live or die. But even if they make stupid decisions, they're at least motivated by something deep down inside each of them that is broken almost beyond repair. That shared broken-ness is why I root for them.

Through Black's economic style of storytelling, you get to know these hapless dummies better than your traditional stoic badasses, your Keanu Reeves' and your Jean-Claude Van Damme's.

Black knows what you expect from an action hero, and he uses those expectations against you to create moments of surprise. As a result, his characters feel much more real, and much more relatable, than their predecessors.

Dialogue is Black's weapon of choice, and he wields his pen like a master. Each line reveals character, every innocuous quip is a seed for later payoff. In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Perry tells Harry that he always hides a tiny gun near his crotch because homophobes never check there. It's played as a joke, but you'll never guess what happens in the third act. Well, maybe you will. Heard of Chekhov? In Iron Man 3, Tony's constant sardonic and self-deprecating remarks illustrate his fear that he is no more than his armour; that deep down, he's a broken man.

The point is, nothing is wasted. You get rewarded for paying attention, and the speaking parts don't trade the spotlight with the punching parts. Instead, they weave together to enhance one another. Nobody is telling jokes, a la Arnold's classic one-liners delivered with a veritable wink at the camera. The humour is instead derived from wit and observation, which makes the final product all the more satisfying. Take this exchange:

For better of for worse, the kind of comedy that permeates Black's screenplays has served as a sort of blueprint for my own sense of humour. Though I may not be as quick on the draw as Perry van Shrike or Jackson Healy, I have been known to whip out the occasional zinger at a party. If I've ever offended you with one of my jokes, don't blame me. Blame Shane.

I could wax poetic abut the brilliance on display in these movies all day, but if I've learned anything from studying them, it's to not waste my words. If you're looking for a perfect example of how to subvert expectations the right way—as opposed to the Game of Thrones season eight way—look no further than this holy trinity of action comedy. As my screenwriting professor used to say, you have to understand the rules before you can break them. Shane Black doesn't just understand the rules of the action hero. He helped write them.