Shane Black, director-writer of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, has written “against type by skewering the conventions of noir fiction in a movie that wouldn’t make sense without a comprehensive awareness and palpable appreciation of each and every one of them,” says MCN’s Gary Dretzka. “As such, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang favorably recalls Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye.” Get outta town! If Black’s film had one-fifth of the funky, bumbling neo-noir charm of The Long Goodbye, it would have been far more intoxicating. If nothing else, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang seems totally stoned on how wise-ass clever it is, especially the dialogue. The Long Goodbye never once grabbed you by the lapels and said, “You’re watching a very hip, ahead-of-the-curve film here!” Either you got the unforced charm of it or you didn’t…Altman seemed to be cool either way.