Shane Black, who wrote and directed the neo-noir comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, loves to throw together characters who really shouldn’t become friends but do exactly that — usually in spite of their better instincts. Take two characters with very little in common, stick them in circumstances which continue to throw them together when they’d rather be apart, and watch the fireworks pop and burgeoning bromance grow.
At first glance, you might see the outlines of familiar cliches and think Michael Mann‘s Heat to be something it’s not: you see Al Pacino‘s Vincent Hanna as a kind of supercop, a crusader with well-honed detective skills willing to break whatever rules are necessary to nab the bad guys; you see Robert DeNiro‘s Neil [...]