Without Gosling and Crowe this would be so boring watch! Their chemistry is wonderful and Ryan is just priceless doing physical comedy. The possible satire that was lurking behind the lines though falls unfortunately flat as it seems to be only used as a plot device so that the film wouldn't be just Gosling and Crowe doing random comedy together.

But perhaps the most beautiful part of the film is that, it is in fact, a tribute to cinema in all ways. In the center of the film is a film, art-film at which the film laughs throughout, that has a chance to change everything. And at the same time the film owes everything to 80s and 70s action-comedies with its feeling that borrows central elements from especially the era of 80s on which we can basically say that action-comedy was invented (well, the true inventor would probably be Hawks but it's harder to define his films this purely).

Crowe's character wants to learn to be a better man as he has truly troubles controlling his aggressiveness whereas Gosling is a lazy idiot who doesn't want to change himself, ultimately he has good heart. Gosling's on-screen daughter brings flavor to the picture and is as diligent as these two "detectives" - perhaps it is this element (among the ideas that these guys are truly flawed human beings) that saves it from macho-bullshit that is in the center of something like Schwarzenegger films.

It's ode to friendship between two guys as it is ode to cinema as Shane Black sees them. Even if some jokes fall flat, their rhythm is wonderfully executed in the fashion that reminds us truly of Hawks - perhaps I can't rank Black to same level but I feel that he has watched his cinema. Perhaps the best thing about the film is that it understands what it is and doesn't try to be anything else too much - yet it doesn't surrender to the most idiotic inventions of the very genre.

Gosling is already reason enough to see this film!