Shane Black sold Lethal Weapon at twenty-two and was briefly the highest-paid screenwriter in the industry, with The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight setting records.
The voice is unmistakable: characters who talk under pressure, narrators who admit to narrating, and structural jokes about the film’s own conventions. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang opens with a narrator complaining about the narration.
Almost everything he writes is set at Christmas, which began as a way to make a familiar setting slightly wrong and became a signature he now leans into deliberately.
Adam LeffLast Action Hero (1993) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Columbia made a deconstruction of the action film starring the biggest action star alive, marketed it to children, and opened it one week after Jurassic Park. The…
Drew PearceTony Stark hunts a terrorist called the Mandarin while battling PTSD from the Avengers, with Christmas as the season-long backdrop. Iron Man 3 is Shane Black's 2013 American superhero film depicting Tony Stark hunting an apparent terrorist called the Mandarin…
Shane BlackA suicidal LAPD detective is partnered with a family-man veteran during a Christmas drug investigation that turns into open warfare. Lethal Weapon is Richard Donner's 1987 American action film about a suicidal Los Angeles Police Department narcotics detective who is…
Shane BlackA small-time thief stumbles into an LA acting career and a noir investigation, with Robert Downey Jr. as narrator across the Christmas season. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is Shane Black's 2005 American neo-noir comedy depicting a small-time New York thief…
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