Review 718: The Fall Guy

 

“They’re in almost every movie. You just don’t know that they’re there. Cause that’s the job, they’re the unknown stunt performer and they get paid to do the cool stuff.” Ryan Gosling’s stuntman Colt Seavers’ narrates over the opening of The Fall Guy, David Leitch’s rousing adaptation of the 80’s action-adventure series. 

Based on the TV Series The Fall Guy by Glen A. Larson, Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a battle-scarred stuntman fresh off an almost career-ending accident. When Colt is preasured to return to his stunt career when he's told ex, camerawoman Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) is making her first film and asked him specifically. With hopes of winning back the love of his life, Colt returns to set only to find Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the movies leading man is missing and production in peril. Ensnared in an increasingly wild conspiracy, he must solve the mystery to save Jody's film and get one last shot with her. What could possibly go right?

At its core, The Fall Guy is an unabashed and earnest love letter to stunt performers  The term "Fall Guy" represents stuntmen literally taking the fall for actors. To vague extent that I can recall the premise original Fall Guy tv series, which I've never seen, the titular "Fall Guy" was a stuntman who moonlighted as a bounty hunter     The friendship between Colt and stunt coordinator Dan Tucker (Winston Duke) is also  the juxtaposition of the spectacle of making blockbuster movies and the reality of making blockbuster movies is just 

Given that David Leitch started out as a stunt performer before transitioning into directing action movies like John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, The Fast and the Furious spin off Hobbs & Shaw and Bullet Train, he's definitely a fitting choice to direct this film and he shows a great deal of energy and originality in his action sequences and special effects, the score by Dominic Lewis is high energy and   there is tones of gorgeous lighting to give the locations so much texture  and to create an idealised 

Ryan Gosling and Emily blunt make for a marvellously matched pair of stars. I’m sure that audiences will adore seeing two halves of Barbenheimer in another Blockbuster. 

Colt is a blue collar hero who is also a regular guy who is having a hard time in his life following a career ending injury. He's fallen in love with Jody and when the bottom falls out of his life he struggles to get back on top.

Jody is making her directional debut on the space opera Metalstorm which looks like what you get when you put Mad Max: Fury Road, Dune and Apocalypse Now in a food blender. She hopes it will be her big break.     

Aaron Taylor-Johnson  Ryder is such a primadonna 

Hannah Waddington from Apple TV+'s Ted Lasso and whom you may also recognise as Septa Unella from Game of Thrones, shouting shame as Lena Heady's Cersei Lannister was peraded through the streets doing a Walk of Antonement is definitely having a blast playing Gail Mayer, the film's producer.

Winston Duke 

The films features one  in Everything Everywhere All at Once's Stephanie Hsu as Tom's personal assistant Alma

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed The Fall Guy. I liked the action, I liked the absurdity, I liked the incongruous use and misuse of stuntwork and I especially liked how it introduces all of these crew members lets them fight it out with special effects and stunts, 4/5.

The Anonymous Critic.