You can probably spot the pattern here. In The Nice Guys, we get two likeable screw-ups for the price of one: Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), a crumpled “enforcer” whose job basically involves frightening people and breaking their limbs for hard cash, and Holland Marsh (Ryan Gosling), a private investigator so catastrophically bad at his job that his own daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), describes him as the worst detective in the world. A missing girl and a dead porn star named Misty Mountains are the flashpoint for Gosling and Crowe’s odd-couple partnership, in which Healy provides the brawn and March provides the nominal brains. Their adventures take in adult entertainment barons, briefcases of cash, dead bodies and screaming gunfights. There’s a psychotic assassin who appears to have walked out of a much-loved 70s TV series. There are even fun cameos for Keith David and Kim Basinger. That the dialogue is sharp and pithy is to be expected, given Black’s track record, and the copious allusions to Raymond Chandler and the pulp novelists who followed him are something he used to similarly satisfying effect in 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. What is less expected is Gosling’s gift for physical comedy. Holland March is one of the actor’s absolute finest creations; a cowardly, clumsy bundle of nerves who has a habit of falling from high places or doing the least heroic things imaginable in tight situations. Black (who co-writes with Anthony Bagarozzi) really seems to have grown in confidence as a director of action as well as comedy. The Nice Guys isn’t high art, obviously, but it’s expertly paced in ways that aren’t always obvious. One throw-away moment, which at first looks like something that should have fluttered to the editing room floor, actually sets up one of the funniest parts of the film – an extended, guttural expression of horror from Gosling. If you’re looking for bones to pick, then it’s fair to say that Black doesn’t push his skills as a writer into unfamiliar new territory here, and March’s precocious daughter aside, female characters don’t exactly come out of The Nice Guys too well. Nevertheless, Black’s latest film packs enough chemistry, charm, chaotic action and belly laughs to make its indulgent-sounding two-and-a-half hour zip by like a stray bullet. I’d even say that, as the final credits rolled, I found myself hoping Black makes at least one more of these. That can only be a good sign. The Nice Guys is out in UK cinemas on the 3rd of June.