Russell Crowe’s Fan-Favorite 116-Minute Mystery Moves to a New Streaming Platform

Rotten Tomatoes | Letterboxd | Metacritic
Carolyn Jenkins is a voracious consumer of film and television. She graduated from Long Island University with an MFA in Screenwriting and Producing where she learned the art of character, plot, and structure. The best teacher is absorbing media and she spends her time reading about different worlds from teen angst to the universe of Stephen King.
Sign in to your Collider account
Known for his big-budget epics and hard-hitting crime movies, Russell Crowe is a powerhouse in the entertainment industry. It is his work in comedy, however, that makes him a true gem. Now streaming on Apple TV, viewers can relive the tragically underrated mystery from Shane Black, The Nice Guys. Also starring Ryan Gosling, the film was criminally under-watched at the theater, a phenomenon that Gosling blames on the success of Angry Birds at the box office.
True or not, the fact remains that The Nice Guys has gone on to be a cult classic due to the undeniable chemistry between the movie’s leads. Crowe plays against type as Jack Healy, one half of the humorous P.I. set looking to solve a mystery of widespread corruption. While on the hunt for a missing girl, he runs into a concurrent case investigated by the hilariously inept Holland March (Gosling). The two make up a team impossible not to root for in the jungle of 1970s Los Angeles.
Fans Are Still Angling For a Sequel to ‘The Nice Guys’
It can be easy to get sucked into the comic stylings of Ryan Gosling, who, in the latter half of his career, has come out as one of the great comedy actors. After grim roles like in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines, he threw audiences for a loop in the 2016 movie about bumbling private detectives who get drawn into a life-or-death case. Gosling steals the show as March, a PI who is as good a detective as he is a father.
During a case, he runs into Jack Healy, more of an enforcer type, who warns him to stop looking for Healy’s client, Amelia (Margaret Qualley). It turns out that both their cases are connected, and they are forced to work together, resulting in one of the most hilarious duos put on screen. Russell Crowe is the straight man to Gosling’s ridiculous portrayal, but The Nice Guys is nothing without their team-up. Together they make up a somewhat decent detective duo who learn how important Amelia actually is.
March and Healy uncover a government conspiracy way above their pay grade, but it opens the door to more implied adventures as they create their own detective agency. Tragically, this would never be seen again. A decade after the release of The Nice Guys in theaters, Shane Black confirms that a sequel is unlikely. This is largely due to the dismal box office returns when it was initially released.
2026 is a different era, however, and the time has never been better for a resurgence of The Nice Guys. Not only is Gosling more popular than ever thanks to Barbie, Project Hail Mary, and his upcoming Ghost Rider endeavor, but Angourie Rice is also a hot ticket commodity. 10 years ago, she played March’s precocious teenage daughter, Holly, and she has only gotten bigger since then. The Nice Guys continues to be a favorite touchstone of many and deserves a second chance.
- Release Date
- May 20, 2016
- Runtime
- 116 minutes
- Director
- Shane Black
- Writers
- Shane Black, Anthony Bagarozzi
- Producers
- Joel Silver
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.