Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s Relationship to Classical Noir’s Archetypes

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The movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang embodies all of the classic noir elements of the 1940s and 50s classical noir era, which allow Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to be perceived as a neo-noir movie. Although Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has some noir elements to it, it looks like more of your typical romantic comedy because of the action and humor that the characters in the movie project. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang twists and adds to the traditional styles of classic noir so that the movie does not seem right, but is changed so that the detective, who is usually the main character, is just a friend of the main character and the femme fatale is not really very fatale at all and is really just a party girl looking for her sister. The movie uses all of the classical noir elements, but in such a way that the elements contradict themselves and in doing so make the movie also seem contradictory. There are lots of hints throughout the movie that have to do with classical noir themes, such as the ending when the Warner Bros icon seems to burn out as if there is a hot light bulb behind it. The characters themselves all relate to some part of classical noir and most of them fit more or less into classical noir archetypes. The movie itself is a combination of comedy and noir that creates a neo-noir movie unlike most others with its color picture that still manages to employ the use of noir themes throughout. The movie was based relatively off one of the 1950’s hardboiled detective novels and reflects some of the themes from those detective novels, such as the detective and the sexy femme fatale archetypes, only from a twisted and comical viewpoint.
The main character is a thief and gives the impression of being more of a common criminal until later in the movie. Alt...

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... expand the neo-noir genre into a more modern and perhaps into a more comical direction by exploring a new direction into a new, yet undiscovered, area of neo-noir. The film is also branching out and making a statement about how movies should not be classified or categorized by genre. “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang brings to light the dangers of shutting movies into corners; Black shows us a film that cannot possibly be characterized, and therefore escapes the scope of categorization (BlogSpot).”

Works Cited

"Anne Goes to the Movies: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: Noir or No?" Anne Goes to the Movies. Anne Goes to the Movies, 1 Mar. 2009. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. http://annegoestothemovies.blogspot.com/2009/03/kiss-kiss-bang-bang-noir-or-no.html.
"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) - Quotes." IMDb. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373469/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu.

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