‘Project Hail Mary’ Fans Need To Watch Ryan Gosling’s 10/10 Action Crime Movie Next

It’s safe to say that audiences love Project Hail Mary, and it’s even safer to owe a large part of its success to Ryan Gosling‘s infectiously likable and funny performance as Ryland Grace. Gosling has always been a well-liked dramatic actor with an undeniable charm and a refusal to eat cereal, but it’s been in the last few years that he’s established himself as a reliably funny and bankable leading man of blockbusters.

What people forget is that, before movies like Barbie and The Fall Guy, Gosling wasn’t often cast in overtly comedic roles. All the aspects that made his performance as Grace so endearing, like his flair for physical comedy, perfect line delivery, and ability to be goofy while still hitting home legitimate dramatic moments, were perfected in Shane Black‘s cult classic, The Nice Guys.

What Is Ryan Gosling’s ‘The Nice Guys’ About?

The Nice Guys takes place in 1970s-era Los Angeles, and follows the unlikely pairing of private detective Holland March (Gosling) and a hired enforcer named Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe). What starts as the case of a missing woman (Margaret Qualley) quickly spirals into a conspiracy that circles back to the death of a porn star named Misty Mountains.

What makes The Nice Guys so memorable, aside from Black’s great direction and a funny script penned by both him and Anthony Bagarozzi, is the flawless chemistry between Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. Their banter and burgeoning friendship throughout the course of the story is what makes the film sing, and catching all their little asides is what makes the movie such an easy rewatch. Crowe merged his stoic reputation and respected dramatic work into a movie that can be so goofy quite seamlessly, but Gosling’s performance is undeniably magic.

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The film cost over $100 million to make.

Gosling has always been a good actor, but The Nice Guys showed us a side of him that we hadn’t seen much before. Sure, he could be charismatic in something like Crazy, Stupid, Love and a few moments in The Ides of March, but this movie requires him to be one-half of a comedy duo. If he wasn’t able to hold up his end of the couch, the movie wouldn’t have worked. Not only does he work with the material, but he elevates it. Watching his performance is simply a joy. It’s the acting equivalent of waking up in the morning and realizing you still have more time to sleep.

Ryan Gosling’s ‘The Nice Guys’ Character Shouldn’t Be This Likable

Part of the comedy between March and Healy is the dichotomy of their jobs compared to their personalities. Healy hurts people for a living, but he seems like a nice man outside of business hours. March is a private investigator, but he’s also selfish, cowardly, and self-destructive. Healy is the professional one with a code of ethics, and March is just out for himself. On paper, he should be completely unlikable (he literally rips off senile old women), but Gosling hits the right balance of goofiness and self-awareness in his actions that he manages to be sympathetic.

Ryan Gosling’s ‘Project Hail Mary’ Performance Builds Off of ‘The Nice Guys’

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Gosling as Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary feels like the closest performance equivalency to Holland March. They’re both goofy characters, but also carry dramatic weight. In Grace’s case, it’s the burden of having to save multiple worlds (among other things) and in March’s case, it’s the grief of losing his wife in an accident. His performance as Grace feels informed by his comedic strengths shown in The Nice Guys, down to having fantastic chemistry with his co-star. Similarly, his physical comedy skills to convey inelegant weightlessness were well-established in The Nice Guys with his Charlie Chaplin-esque kerfuffle of being incapable of keeping a bathroom stall door open with his pants down (and a lit cigarette falling into said pants).

There’s an implicit line of breadcrumbs that lead from one role to the other. It’s that trail of evidence that makes it hard to believe that someone who liked Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary wouldn’t also love his performance in The Nice Guys. Much like Project Hail Mary, it’s also a film that exists without the security blanket of being part of an existing IP — albeit with a considerably less grandiose and ambitious plot. If you find yourself loving Gosling’s work in the charming sci-fi, then the neo-noir buddy comedy The Nice Guys is your next must-watch.

Release Date

May 20, 2016

Runtime

116minutes

Director

Shane Black