Great Character: Harmony Faith Lane (“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”)
The Great Character theme for the month: Christmas characters. Today: Harmony Faith Lane in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), screenplay by Shane Black, screen story by Shane Black, novel by Brett Halliday. Here is Jason Cuthbert’s weekly Great Character post:
The year of 2005 was an exciting ride of upward mobility for the acting career of Michelle Monaghan. She was able to mount her magnetic screen presence alongside the gigantic likes of Brad Pitt in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Keanu Reeve in Constantine and Charlize Theron in North Country. But it was Monaghan’s wisecracking role of Harmony Faith Lane alongside a rebounding Robert Downey Jr. in the action crime comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that gave her a uniquely snarky character to showcase to audiences and future casting agents.
Based somewhat on the Brett Halliday novel Bodies Are Where You Find Them, the unpredictable Los Angeles mystery sizzler Kiss Kiss Bang Bang debuted at the top of the movie screening food chain: the Cannes Film Festival. It was scripted and directed by Shane Black, who like Robert Downey Jr. was also in the midst of a resume resurrection after not having had a prominent screenwriting credit since The Long Kiss Goodnight in 1996. Shane Black applied two of his frequent style flourishes to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a kidnapping plot element as well as making a Christmas movie that is not about Christmas as he also did while penning Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodbye and Iron Man 3.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from IMDB:
A murder mystery brings together a private eye, a struggling actress, and a thief masquerading as an actor.
While Robert Downey Jr.’s character Harry Lockhart goes from Christmas shopping shoplifter to Hollywood hopeful, his back-in-the-day secret sweetie Harmony Faith Lane is fast-forwarded to Harry’s present tense life in L.A. when they run into each other at a posh party thrown by actor/businessman Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen) then afterwards late night at a bar. She immediately comes across as possessing a genuine balance of compassion for others and blunt, unsugar-coated honesty.
HARMONY FAITH LANE: (discussing the Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer story) Yes, racist. I’m serious. Look, the other reindeer, they laugh at him and they scorn him. Then out of the blue, they need him. He is as good as a fog light or whatever.
Underneath Harmony’s entertainer-savvy sex appeal is a sharp, piercing intelligence that could have been acquired from reading all those Johnny Gossamer mystery novels well before she was old enough to understand the lurid details.
HARMONY FAITH LANE: Badly is an adverb. So to say you feel badly would be saying that the mechanism, which allows you to feel, is broken.
Aside from Harmony’s acute sense of grammar and detail, there is also her relentless ability to scrutinize (perfect murder mystery skills) and ridicule her fellow Tinseltown movers and shakers, and losers and fakers.
HARMONY FAITH LANE: Well, for starters, she’s been fucked more times than she’s had a hot meal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQdxHzDK12o
Harmony appears to have begun as a small town rural eyes-wide-open idealistic actress, especially being that her performance aspirations began as a child, pretending to be getting sawed in horrific half at a carnival by her kiddie buddy Harry trying his hand at magic. But now, as a Los Angelina, lost among the angels of Hollywood heartbreak, Harmony Faith Lane is trying to keep some harmony and faith in her career lane, while feeling tremendous guilt for leaving her younger behind with an abusive guardian. She has become chiseled into a 34 year-old struggling actress, putting up a wall around her ego to protect herself from a full-blown “failed actress” meltdown.
HARMONY FAITH LANE: You think I’m amazing. You do. Cause that’s who I told you I’d be. That was the game plan.
With Harry’s earlier magician ambitions amounting only to making retail merchandise disappear, and his acting career adding up to him pretending to be a private investigator to determine who murdered Harmony’s younger sister, there is a bond Harmony slowly begins to indulge in with Harry. With the “when Harry met Harmony” reunion, there appears to be a second chance for Harmony and Harry to become reborn as a team, instead as disappointed singular nomadic dreamers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbYyYYHysqM
For her firm ability to hold her own in male dominated settings, for her witty “give me a break” ego-deflating remarks, her ability to make a Santa Clause suit sexy and her desire to super-glue her broken heart with authentic love — HARMONY FAITH LANE is a gifted GREAT CHARACTER in the Christmas movie genre.
Thank you, Jason, for this post and the entire month-long series featuring Christmas characters. What’s your favorite bit from the movie? Please join us in comments to discuss Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
You may follow Jason on Twitter: @A2Jason.