Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a World of Snark comedy-Film Noir. The story is a parody of pulp detective novels set in the modern Hollywood entertainment scene. The film was a critical success, but a box-office bomb.The film centers around—and is narrated by—Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey, Jr.), a down-on-his-luck thief who is mistaken for a method actor by a couple of movie producers after he barges into their auditions while fleeing from the cops. They send him to to Hollywood for a screen test where he encounters private eye "Gay" Perry (Val Kilmer) and Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan), his childhood crush from his own hometown. Perry is supposed to give Harry a few basic detective lessons to make him more believable in his role, but their very first job together sees them witnessing a murder and the dumping of the body.With a lot of bad luck, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and through several cases of mistaken identity, Harry finds himself embroiled in a real life murder-mystery... just like the pulp novels he used to read as a kid. Applying what he knows from his reading, Harry attempts to be the good guy for once, get the girl, and live happily ever after.
An Ass Kicking Christmas - Lampshaded at Harmony's party, which is filled from wall-to-wall in semi-nude, writhing models in Christmas-themed costumes (including a reindeer).
Harry: Fuck this. Corpses, guys in masks, people kissing; this is wrong.
Badass Bystander - When Perry is attacked by a Mook in a park, he is saved the trouble of a gunfight when a hot dog vendor pulls out a handgun and blows the Mook away. Apparently the vendor didn't appreciate it when the Mook drove his car into the hot dog stand.
Breaking the Fourth Wall - Harry's narration is conscious of the fact that he's narrating a film. In the end, Harry and Perry suddenly address the audience.
Buffy Speak - Almost every time Harry has to explain something.
Butt Monkey - If someone is going to get smacked, tortured, beaten up or otherwise mangled, it's going to be Harry. No one else is even allowed to get shot near him without the bullet hitting him, too. Every single time. Slightly lampshaded.
Mook: You look chilly. Come back inside.
Perry: Actually, I'm from back East. I'm kinda diggin' the cold.
Chekhov's Gun - The little derringer Harry finds in Perry's glove box. As Perry says, homophobes avoid patting down his groin when checking for guns. Mistake.
Also, Flicka and the girl Harry runs into at the Christmas party with the living art. Though the later takes all of two minutes to come back.
The Chick - Harry pretty clearly is this to Gay Perry's Two-Fisted Private Investigator
Chivalrous Pervert - Harry has a serious case of this - no problem hitting on, looking at, or sleeping with women, but he has deep issues with any unsolicited contact and is uncomfortable with "easy" Hollywood girls. Early on in the movie he gets beat up preventing a guy from groping a sleeping Harmony at a party, only to hit on her hours after, and then sleep with her friend. Later, he touches her breast to get a spider, and when she says she didn't mind if he had copped a feel, he freaks out and says there's something wrong with her and the guys she hangs out with if she didn't mind him touching her. He adamantly refuses "pity sex".
Contemplate Our Navels - A nice pause in the action where Harry looks back at his unrequited love's apartment and sighs.
Dead Little Sister - Jenna Lane. Interestingly, it wasn't her death that screwed Harmony up - it was that Harmony was helpless to stop their father regularly raping Jenna from a very young age.
Deadpan Snarker - Pretty much the entire cast spends the movie snarking at each other, but none more so than Perry.
Harry: So are you really gay? "Gay" Perry: Oh no, I'm knee-deep in pussy. I just love the name so much, I can't get rid of it.
Dude, She's Like, In a Coma! - Happens twice: When Harmony falls asleep at a party, her date feels up her thigh, prompting Harry to stand up for her and get beaten up in the process. When she faints later on, he tries to swat a spider from her cleavage, waking her up and making her think that he was groping her.
Electric Torture - Harry gets his genitals shocked by one of the villain's goons.
Also some excruciating Enforced Method Acting here. Robert Downey Jr. let his girlfriend yank his testicles from off-camera to ensure he was properly agonized in the torture scene.
Actually one of the director's assistants was crouching off camera jabbing him in the kidneys, he explains it in the commentary tract that runs alongside the movie on the dvd.
Harry: Don't worry, I saw Lord of the Rings. I'm not going to end this 17 times.
Enforced Method Acting - Inverted with Harry's 'audition' in the beginning, where he's mistaken for an actor. Actually, he was running from the police and barged into the room by chance. It's perfect for the part he's reading from, however.
False Roulette - Subverted. Harry really does leave a bullet in the gun, counting on probability. The results are brilliant.
Harry: I just put in one bullet, didn't I?
Perry: You put a live round in that gun?
Harry:[stammers] Well yeah, there was like an 8% chance—!
Fake-Out Make-Out - Also subverted. Perry actually does plant a big one on Harry to fool a passerby (or if you prefer, Batman planted one on Iron Man).
Fakeout Opening - Begins at a church fair with a kid doing magic. Yes, Harry lampshades this too.
Femme Fatale - Subverted by Harmony: she's coded this way, being alluring, sexual and a heap of trouble for Harry, but she's just a well-meaning screw-up like him.
Film Noir - Noir cliches are lampshaded repeatedly in the plot.
Fingore - Harmony slamming her door in Harry's face — and on his finger, breaking it clean off. He has it reattached only to be torn off again and eaten by a dog.
Genre Savvy - References to Noir abound, and Harmony's extensive knowledge of pulp crime novels comes in handy. There turns out to be a reason for that - Harlan Dexter, who played Johnny Gossamer in an old movie and has all those novels at his home, is behind the crime.
Perry knows his film noir, too. Particularly the part about how mooks always stick guns directly against the hero's back, when professionals in real life know to never, ever do this.
Perry also uses his savviness to get out of another such situation, when he uses a homophobe's prejudices against him by keeping a tiny revolver stashed next to his crotch, knowing that the guy would never bother to check there.
Male Gaze - Harry misses plot point 2 because he's staring at Harmony's chest. Lampshaded because he's also narrating and commits a Freudian Slip while he's trying to relate the plot point.
First Hitman: Well now, here we all are. Ike, Mike and Mustard.
Harry: What the hell does that mean?
Second Hitman: You know, I'm with him on this one, man. That's pretty fucking obscure.
First Hitman: Horse shit, I hear that all the time!
Second Hitman: You do?
First Hitman: Yeah, sure.
Second Hitman: Where, at the 1942 club?
First Hitman: Hey, just 'cause you didn't get in...
Second Hitman: Motherfucker, I could've gotten in!
(later)
First Hitman: You wanna know who we are? I'm the frying pan, see? And my boy over here, he's?
Second Hitman: Mustard. I'm Mustard, baby.
Since the movie never explains it: "Ike and Mike" are old-timey nicknames for salt and pepper, so "Ike, Mike and Mustard" are your standard-issue diner condiments.
Mood Whiplash - For somereason, the topic of Harmony's sister Jenna just sucks all the comedy out of the room. This is lampshaded in the end by Harry's narration.
Never Suicide - It actually is a suicide, even though the characters assume it isn't and the suicide fits cleanly into one theory on what happened.
Nonchalant Dodge - Perry wins this award for insulting a roomful of partygoers, then deftly ducking a bottle thrown at him without so much as a blink.
Not What It Looks Like: A funny example. Perry forcibly kisses Harry to make some cops move along. Harmony witnesses the kiss and asks why they were making out. Cut to Harry VOing that he managed to convince her he wasn't gay and that he still doesn't know how he managed to pull that off.
Shout Out - the titles of Philip Marlowe novels are dropped into the dialogue and used as titles for the sections of the film, e.g. 'The Lady In The Lake' and 'The Little Sister'.
Shut Up, Hannibal! - Harry interrupts Mr. Fire's "tough guy" speech with a few bullets to the chest.
Sleeps with Everyone but You: Harmony slept with every guy in high school but Harry, who was her Unlucky Childhood Friend, and his friend Chutney out of loyalty to Harry. Except that she slept with Chutney, too. Needless to say, Harry is not pleased to learn this.
The Snark Knight - Perry tries to pass himself off as this ("I'm not a good guy"). It's evident that he's noble at his core.
Stop Helping Me! - Harry kindly asks Perry to quit antagonizing Aurelio, the man who has just strapped electrodes to Harry's privates. However, the trope is usually invoked by Perry, who often has the situation in hand until Harry comes bumbling into it.
Straight Gay - "Gay" Perry, who is a badass and generally avoids gay stereotypes. On the other hand, he never hides what is he, and has "I Will Survive" as a ringtone.
Take That - Harry gets several, mostly at other movies.
Taking the Bullet - Subverted. Perry puts himself between Harry and a mook, simultaneously shooting the mook and taking a bullet... but the bullet goes straight through Perry and hits Harry anyway.
There Is Only One Bed - Harry initially claims to be fine with sharing chastely, but gets uncomfortable when she cuddles up to him and he gets a boner.
This Is Reality - Perry. "Do not play detective. This is not a book. This is not a movie."
This is also the main point of the film: tearing down all the palatable trappings of a cool detective story, leaving a very sour reality-based story, but with a veneer of winks-to-the-audience and snappy banter reminding us why the fake stories are fun in the first place.
Wrong Genre Savvy - Harry throwing Perry's pistol in the lake so it can't be traced. His $2,000, customized Vektor CP1 given to him by his mother, now practically gift-wrapped for the cops to find when they dredge the lake.
Although for being a Rare Gun, quite curiously another one appears in Harry's hands later in the film
You Suck: Harry occassionally chides the audience in his narration.
"How about you, movie-goer? Have you figured out the case of the... dead people in LA yet? Times Square audiences, please don't shout at the screen, and stop picking at that, it'll just get worse."
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