Ryan Gosling’s private investigator makes most of his discoveries by falling off, over and into things

In the late 80s, Shane Black’s Lethal Weapon script became a touchstone for saleable, hard-boiled, odd-couple buddy pics, movies that combined action, comedy and wise-assed verbal vulgarity in varying measures. 1991’s The Last Boy Scout built on Black’s fondness for smart, nihilistic profanity, predating the arrival of Reservoir Dogs, after which anything involving swearing, guns and cine-literacy would be lazily labelled “Tarantino-esque”. In 1996, Black made headlines by earning a record-breaking $4m for penning the script for what became the Geena Davis/Samuel Jackson thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight. But it wasn’t until 2005 that the writer finally turned director with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a tongue-in-cheek LA neo-noir, the mistyped tagline for which ran: “SeX. MurdEr. MyStery. Welcome to the party.”

Now, after a stint directing the superhero sequel Iron Man 3, Black is back on home turf with this Joel Silver-produced slice of wisecracking Tinseltown intrigue from “a time of disco, sex, scandal”. Resurrecting a screenplay originally co-written with Anthony Bagarozzi in 2001, The Nice Guys serves up a typically brash fantasy about two mismatched misfits – one thuggish, one doleful – swirling around in what Black calls the “horrible combination of smog and porn” of 1977 Los Angeles. On one level, the film offers a sleazy 70s comic riposte to the 30 intrigues of Polanski’s epochal Chinatown, with the merest whiff of Altman’s The Long Goodbye and inevitable casting echoes of LA Confidential. Ryan Gosling is Holland March, a schlubby private investigator (and struggling single father) with a penchant for sleeping in the bath, whose client list includes bewildered old ladies worried about the whereabouts of their dead husbands. Russell Crowe is the flabby-but-punchy enforcer Jackson Healy, who beats people up for a living and first targets, then teams up with March.

The suspicious death of adult movie star Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio) and the whereabouts of young Amelia Kuttner (Margaret Qualley) set plot wheels in motion, as March and Healy stumble into a labyrinthine web stretching from street-level anti-pollution activists to Kim Basinger’s Department of Justice official Judith Kuttner (Amelia’s mum) via catalytic converter conspiracies and giant talking bees. Through it all, only March’s precocious adolescent daughter Holly (rising star Angourie Rice) seems to have any grasp of what’s really going on – a neat device that not only provokes some sassy, sentimental comedy about March’s uselessness as a father, but also provides Black with a handy get-out-of-jail-free card against accusations of reductively macho stereotyping.

More slapstick than gumshoe, The Nice Guys is at its best when riffing broadly on the chaotic chemistry between its chalk-and-cheese male stars. A heavily trailed scene involving a lavatory door, a dropped cigarette and a fumbled gun has deadpan, Keatonesque charm, with Gosling demonstrating a hitherto untapped talent for perfectly timed pratfalls.

Elsewhere, Crowe is harassed by mobsters in a manner that bizarrely recalls Michael Palin’s torture in A Fish Called Wanda, while an early car crash puts a nasty, leering twist on that scene from Animal House in which a Playboy-reading kid gets a bunny girl thrown through his window.

With its retro porn trappings and period funk soundtrack, The Nice Guys also seems to invite comparisons with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, although in terms of its chaotic 70s stoner vibe it’s more Inherent Vice-lite. There’s definitely an air of Joaquin Phoenix’s zonked investigations in March’s habit of making the most of his major discoveries by falling off, over and into things, usually while sozzled.

Posters for Airport ’77, jokes about plot-heavy porn and a touch of celluloid fetishism add nostalgic charm, along with spangly flares and splattery comic violence. It’s rompy fare with several outre laughs and a callously casual attitude to the collateral damage of gunfights. Those who relished the metatextuality of Black’s finest works may find themselves longing for something a little more sly; these lower punches aim more for the belly than the head.

There’s little here to match the playful subversiveness of The Long Kiss Goodnight and it’s no surprise to learn that Russell Crowe was no fan of the superior Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which he apparently found “too aware of itself… not funny for me”. But after the billion-dollar success of Iron Man 3, Black is clearly relishing the opportunity to return to his roots with something more down and dirty, even if its throwback charms are occasionally more retrograde than retro.