‘The Fall Guy’ Review
A high-concept action-comedy with some romance: What is this, the 1980s?
IT’S NICE THAT HOLLYWOOD seems to have finally figured out how best to use Ryan Gosling.
Through much of his career, Gosling has been hired for roles that might be described, in shorthand, as good-looking brooder. In Drive, he was practically mute, a childlike stunt driver with maniacal, some might say sociopathic, focus and dedication to his own set of rules. He wasn’t too different in The Place Beyond the Pines, and it’s hard to say who was more robotic: His “K” in Blade Runner 2049 or his Neil Armstrong in First Man.1 Despite some romantic roles being thrown into the mix in pictures like The Notebook and Crazy, Stupid, Love, one would typically describe his few smiles as “wry” or “knowing.”
But the enormous success of Barbie—and the general recognition that he was the best, funniest part of it, hence his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination—combined with his breakout turns on Saturday Night Live over the last few years have helped the general public recognize what those of us who loved The Nice Guys saw a while back: there’s a clown underneath all that moody gloom.
Enter The Fall Guy, which is a delightful throwback of a movie: a big-budget action-comedy with romantic elements, the likes of which have been sadly absent in recent years outside of the occasional flick like The Lost City. Gosling stars as Colt Seavers, a stuntman who, as the movie opens, is in love with camera operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). They flirt on set and in trailers; they’re planning a beach getaway once the shoot on A-Lister Tom Ryder’s (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) latest spectacle ends. But an accident during a gag—that’s an industry term for “stunt”—results in a broken back for Colt and he disappears from Jody’s life.
Fast-forward eighteen months and Colt is valeting cars at a family-owned Mexican joint when he gets a call from Ryder’s producer, Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham): he’s needed on Ryder’s new shoot in Australia, and the director—a newly promoted Jody, getting her big break—wants him to do something no one else can do. When he gets there he learns that all is not as it seems: Ryder is missing, there are dead bodies and drug dealers and hit men, and Jody is less than thrilled he’s back. At least at first. At least until he can win her over with the sheepish grin and that knee-knocking stare of his.
Yes, The Fall Guy falls into the dreaded “movie about movies” category; it sometimes feels as though there are no stories Hollywood likes to tell more than their own. However, it’s also a love letter to the professional stunt guys out there, the ones who are lit on fire and tossed around in cars and dropped out of helicopters all while some dork like Tom Ryder sits there and wonders whether the camera grabbed too much of the stuntman’s jawline. And it’s not above teasing the industry writ large: Ryder’s insistence that he does all his own stunts is more than just a joke here. There’s a nice montage during the credits in which we see that Gosling is most certainly not doing all his own stunts.
More than tribute or education, though, The Fall Guy is fun. It’s just pure, unadulterated fun. The action is serious but not self-serious; the vehicular stunts deliver a kind of joyful mayhem that still feels more grounded than the CG spectaculars of the Fast and Furious franchise; and the will-they-won’t-they tension between Blunt and Gosling is playful and silly. It’s clear that everyone on director David Leitch’s set was having a good time and it’s nice to see this one-time stuntman helm the love letter to the industry that made him famous. The whole thing is just really . . . nice. It’s a pleasant time at the movies!
It’s not a perfect time at the movies; there are some clear storytelling problems. A running gag involves the third-act issues of the movie-within-a-movie being directed by Jody, called Metalstorm, and one imagines there’s a meta-joke here about what was happening on The Fall Guy. There’s probably a reason this movie has seven different endings and feels ten or fifteen minutes too long, is what I’m saying. And yet I found myself not really caring all that much about the wheel-spinning of the plot mechanics, because Gosling and Blunt are just so damn charming and fun to be around. I like these two! This is what star power is! I’d happily watch two more of these movies. Let’s hope we get the chance.