The Nice Guys disturbingly blurs lines between adults and children

Even when packaged as entertainment, ideas have consequences. That’s why WORLD occasionally reviews a movie like The Nice Guys, whose MPAA rating alone should serve as a sufficient warning for parents who want to protect their children (and themselves) from indecent viewing material. But sometimes it’s necessary to stoop low and put an ear to the ground to detect the herd of beasts thundering toward our wagons.

The Nice Guys takes place in 1977 Los Angeles. For a couple of dollars, freelance thug Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) delivers messages with his brass knuckles. Only slightly less disreputable but significantly less brawny, private investigator Holland March (Ryan Gosling) makes a living taking easy cases. March is raising his 13-year-old daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), whose mother recently died. It’s Holly’s role in the film that many viewers, even those accustomed to R-rated fare, will find disturbing.

Healy and March team up to find Amelia (Margaret Qualley), the missing daughter of Justice Department head Judith Kutner (Kim Basinger). Amelia’s disappearance seems to be connected to the deaths of several people involved in the production of an adult film. A plot twist links Kutner’s probe of three automakers’ corporate corruption to her daughter’s unknown whereabouts.

While it drenches viewers in objectionable visuals, it seems hypocritical to laud the film’s superb, era-immersing sets and props: a boxy electric shaver sits on a bathroom sink, green and orange flower print wallpaper covers a living room’s interior, and curvy-fendered Oldsmobile Toronados and other vintage gas-guzzlers line neighborhood streets. Excessive shootouts and bared flesh (with nonstop expletives that give the film a strong R rating) fail to camouflage a rather unoriginal plot. Reluctant buddy-investigators Healy and March lack the chemistry of Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs. And neither Crowe nor Gosling hold a candle to the finely nuanced comedic timing of James Garner, who in 1977 won an Emmy playing television’s best-known L.A.-based private eye.

It’s one thing for adults to abuse each other, unmindful that they bear God’s image, but it’s another thing to bring a child into the picture. In one scene, a boy on a bicycle engages in a sexually charged conversation. And throughout the film, Holly assists her father and Healy in their search for Amelia, which wends through a series of raunchy parties. Holly fights off hit men, mingles with inebriated and unclothed revelers, and watches an adult film with one of its actresses. Restraining Healy from excess violence and uncovering evidence her alcoholic dad misses, Holly acts the most grown-up of the ragtag investigative team.

But she’s not a grown-up—she’s 13. So, why set a young girl at the center of a story revolving around the adult film industry? Is the film a lone case of poor judgment, indicative of Hollywood’s mindset, or an accurate barometer marking the culture’s increasingly blurred line between children and adults, particularly in sexual matters?

Parents, beware.