It’s no accident that not one of the protagonists of each “Barry” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” are Hollywood success tales — as a substitute, they’re both washed-up has-beens or misguided hopefuls. In essence, each the sequence and the film dangle the potential of showbiz fame and fortune in entrance of their heroes solely as a solution to display the nice lie that’s Hollywood in addition to present how these folks cannot escape their pasts.
In some instances, that final level is literal: the place Barry’s work follows him to L.A. within the type of his mentor/manipulator Fuches (Stephen Root), Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) in “Kiss Kiss” is a small-time thief who barely manages to flee the regulation by unwittingly crashing an audition, his improvised efficiency impressing the casting folks sufficient to ship him to L.A. Ostensibly on the lam, Harry permits himself to be taken in by the promise of being forged in a significant movement image, being given “detective lessons” for his position by Hollywood hanger-on “Gay” Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer).
Both Barry and Harry (good rhyme there, no?) discover themselves fairly rapidly mired in life-or-death hassle that derails their appearing careers. Barry has to take care of a myriad of piling-up points surrounding his secret id as a killer (which ends up in extra lifeless our bodies) whereas Harry and Perry (there it’s once more) are nearly actually haunted by the corpse of Veronica Dexter, the daughter of actor Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen) who’s making an attempt to get ahold of the inheritance left to her.
In the present as within the movie, Hollywood is a bastion of escapism in each manner, a path to reinvention in addition to an absolution of sin. Neither Barry, Harry, Perry, nor their mates will obtain this as a result of it was by no means really achievable anyway.