The Fall Guy is the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater so far this year. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are two of the most likable actors on the planet and their chemistry is fantastic. The film is loosely based on the 1980’s TV series of the same name which starred Lee Majors, but if you have no familiarity with the TV series (I sure didn’t), it will not hinder your enjoyment of the film. I had never heard of the TV show before, and I’m probably not alone in that, but the movie is so much fun that it really doesn’t matter.
Universal Pictures
Gosling plays a movie stuntman named Colt Seavers, and at the beginning of the film he is the stunt double for a famous actor named Tom Ryder, played fabulously by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who turns out to be one of the biggest jerks imaginable. Colt is in a relationship with a camerawoman named Jody Moreno, played by Emily Blunt. Things are going great until a stunt goes wrong and Colt is badly injured, which leads to him abandoning his career as a stuntman and drifting apart from Jody.
A year and a half later, Colt is working as a valet at a Mexican restaurant when he receives a call from Gail Meyer, played by Hannah Waddingham. Gail is a film producer who works closely with Tom Ryder, and she tells Colt that Jody is directing her first film and wants Colt to join the production as a stuntman. Colt is of course still in love with Jody and accepts, albeit with some reluctance because he doesn’t know if Jody still has feelings for him too (she does, although it’s complicated).
After an awkward reunion with Jody, Colt is told by Gail that Tom Ryder is mysteriously missing, and she asks Colt to find Tom so that Jody’s directorial debut won’t be ruined. Colt sets off to find the wayward star, and in so doing he falls headfirst into a maelstrom of intrigue and mayhem, and rekindles his relationship with the love of his life. At its heart, The Fall Guy is a romantic comedy. It’s the sort of movie where you spend the whole thing thinking that the two main characters were made for each other, and you know that they will inevitably end up together.
You might say that that makes the outcome somewhat predictable, and to a degree you’d be right. The film’s resolution is pretty much what you would expect, and if you wanted to you could probably poke holes in the plot, but if you’re like me then you will be having so much fun that these minor flaws won’t bother you. Gosling and Blunt are both so damn likable and charming that you will immediately be rooting for them. The movie is a romantic comedy at heart but it’s still chock-full of exciting and memorable action, and is also a love letter to the underappreciated art of movie stunt work.
Stunt performers are the most underrated and underappreciated people in Hollywood. It is an egregious oversight that stuntpeople don’t have a category at the Oscars. These folks literally risk their lives for our entertainment and the least we could do is award them with a gold statuette every once in a while. One of the many things I love about Keanu Reeves is that whenever he gives an interview and is asked about action scenes and stunt work, he mentions his stunt double by name. Stunt performers deserve far more credit and recognition.
The Fall Guy was directed by David Leitch, himself a former stuntman with decades of experience under his belt. He is now also an accomplished director in his own right, his previous films include Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Bullet Train, and the first John Wick. The guy knows his stuff, and I think that The Fall Guy is his best film to date. He nails the balance between action, comedy, and romance.
There are a lot of movies about people making movies, and I’m not usually a fan of those types of movies (I think that sentence made sense). Movies about people making movies always seem pretentious to me, but The Fall Guy doesn’t. The Fall Guy is a bit self-referential, but it never comes across as being too smug or full of itself. It’s not necessarily trying to be a profound treatise on the magic of cinema or whatever, and David Leitch never loses sight of the fact that the movie is first and foremost meant to be entertaining, and it succeeds marvelously.
The scenes in which Jody and Colt are filming her movie are actually some of the most fun scenes in the film. Jody’s movie is a sci-fi epic called METALSTORM, which sounds like it could be the name of one of the German or Scandinavian metal bands I listen to. METALSTORM looks a bit like Mad Max with aliens, and it’s about a space cowboy who falls in love with an alien princess. The space cowboy and the princess are metaphorical stand-ins for Colt and Jody, and when the two are talking about the relationship between the cowboy and the princess, they are also talking about their own relationship. It is a bit meta, but in a fun way instead of a smug or annoying way. There’s also a very funny fake trailer for METALSTORM at the end of the movie, and I would totally watch it in real life.
I also love David Leitch’s use of popular music in the film, it reminded me a lot of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films. Sometimes there is no better option for a kick-ass fight scene or car chase than a classic rock song, and The Fall Guy makes excellent use of songs by AC/DC, Kiss, and Taylor Swift, as well as a brilliant use of the song “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness, which made me absurdly happy.
As a former stuntman, Leitch knows how to craft exciting and fun action sequences, and The Fall Guy’s action scenes are thrilling. The movie even set a Guinness World Record for one of its car stunts (for the most cannon rolls, apparently. I’m not sure what that means but it sure sounds cool!). There are times when the plot feels somewhat secondary, even though there are some fun twists and turns it doesn’t feel like a plot-heavy movie to me. The primary focus is on Gosling and Blunt, and they have more than enough charisma to carry the film.
This is not the first time Gosling has played a stuntman, he also played a stunt driver in Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 cult classic Drive, although that was a vastly different movie from The Fall Guy. Gosling’s character here seems like a combination between his stunt driver character in Drive and his recent Oscar-nominated role as Ken in Barbie. I’m a bit of a hypocrite because I haven’t seen Barbie, but come on man, even I know about Kenergy.
Universal Pictures
The Fall Guy is tremendous fun and is my favorite movie of the year so far. It is the rare romantic comedy that manages to be both romantic and funny, and it is also full of thrilling action. It is rock-solid entertainment from start to finish and I can’t recommend it enough.
thezombieroom 