The Fall Guy: Movie Review

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Hannah Waddingham, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Winston Duke, Teresa Palmer
Director: David Leitch

Mixing both meta touches over the state of the industry, the introduction of AI and the continual ignoring of the stunt community with a romantic comedy and mystery all prove to be relatively fertile ground for The Fall Guy.

With only the slightest hint of narrative DNA from the 80s show, which starred Lee Majors, coursing through its veins, Leitch's film focuses on a ridiculously charismatic Ryan Gosling's stuntman Colt Seavers.

When Seavers is injured in a career-ending moment, he goes AWOL, ghosting both the apparent love of his life Jody (Blunt, who blazes strongly in the beginning before fading toward the end) and his beloved job.

Tempted back in, Seavers soon finds himself framed while shooting Metalstorm (a riff on the Australian-shot Mad Max film from George Miller) and blamed for the death of another stuntman....

The Fall Guy is a film that goes on too long and tries to stretch its wafer-thin plot as far as it will go, but it never fails to offer much more than a good time at the movies, with a ridiculously high level of stunts involved for all to enjoy.

It's squarely a love letter to the stunt community, but also one that plays with the tropes of the genres, and does so lovingly and with free abandon. Central to its success is the charm of Gosling, who channels both the comedy of his Nice Guys movie character and the charisma that's been deployed to maximum effect prior to this. It helps that initially Blunt proves to be an excellent sparring partner - in one early scene alone, the pair battle through their issues on an open set mid-shot, a quickfire rattle of a sequence that's both well written and well directed.

But ultimately, The Fall Guy becomes a victim of its own intentions.

Discussions within the film about how to solve Metalstorm's problematic third act seem to permeate much of The Fall Guy's third act, and the film collapses into a mess of action sequences that exist solely to provide an 80s-style OTT ending that Fall Guy creator Glen A Larson would no doubt be proud of.

Perhaps that's the point of The Fall Guy - to simultaneously send up the romantic comedy genre it's from and to inject commentary on today's cinema-making processes while doing so. That's no bad aim, and there's no denying The Fall Guy is a blockbuster piece of entertainment that has its heart aimed at showcasing the craft of movie-making with a star who continues to be endlessly watchable.