For the first time in nearly a decade, the summer blockbuster season is ushered in not with a superhero, but with a stuntman. The often maligned but ever present and extremely necessary stunt category has been a hot topic in cinema as of late, with many advocating for the entirety of the work to get their flowers from the Academy at the Oscars.
If social media is the conversation starter, then “The Fall Guy” is the revolution.
Never has been there a more clear case for why stunts need to be recognized more among the elites of awards. They are essential to filmmaking and essential to making your favorite celebrities look good, Tom Cruise not withstanding. It’s something we all know but don’t know what to do about, and “The Fall Guy” is big bright spotlight on Hollywood’s most necessary yet always overlooked category. This is a movie for people that love movies. Not just the finished product, but how the movie magic happens and a beautiful love letter to all the people that quite literally risk their lives to entertain audiences.
“The Fall Guy” may overstay its welcome with plodding pacing and an incoherent narrative, but it is so much damn fun that those things don’t matter. This is a tried and true crowd pleaser, the kind of film that isn’t so concerned with how all the pieces fit together but rather how those pieces are made in the first place. It peels back the curtain of the Hollywood machine, and delivers a ton of laughs and some pretty great stunts that go out of their way to show you just how difficult it is to pull some of this stuff off for your viewing pleasure. “It all hurts,” our star Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) says. And that’s really what captures the essence of the film. It’s not that “The Fall Guy” pushes the limits of stuntwork ala “John Wick Chapter 4” where you marvel at the spectacle and wonder how in the world they pulled it off. No, this film wants to show you how they pulled it off and how difficult something as simple as sending a stuntman through a windshield or lighting him on fire over and over again or what it actually looks like when you ask him to flip a car over 8 times during a pyrotechnic explosion. “The Fall Guy” doesn’t just want you to marvel at the final product. It wants you to relish in how much goes in to bringing these bombastic and death defying stunts to life, and honor the brave men and women that do this every day.
It’s also really, really, funny and whole lotta fun. We’ll talk about that more in a bit, but I had to get on my “Make a Stunts Category at the Oscars, you cowards!” soap box for a minute and really drive the point home for how important that is, especially since that is really entire purpose of the film itself. Honor the stunts!
Directed by David Leitch (“Bullet Train,” “Deadpool 2,” “Hobbs and Shaw“) and written by Drew Pearce (“Iron Man 3,” “Hotel Artemis) “The Fall Guy” follows stuntman Colt Seavers (Gosling) who is the double for high profile action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson hilariously channeling every single douchebag celebrity troupe you can imagine). His girlfriend Jody (Emily Blunt) is a camera operator on the film they are working on, and they are both beginning a new romantic relationship. A horrible accident during a stunt causes Seavers to abandon his work and Jody, retreating from the industry and becoming a valet in Los Angeles. After 18 months, he is called back into action by Tom’s producer Gale (Hannah Waddingham) to work on Jody’s first feature film Metalstorm, a sci-fi epic and a hilarious parody of “Dune.” Shenanigans ensue when Tom goes missing, Jody didn’t know Colt was back on set, and a plot to frame a faceless stuntman for crimes he didn’t commit begin to unfold all while they trying win Jody back and help her complete her film. “The Fall Guy” also stars Winston Duke, Teresa Palmer, and Stephanie Hsu. Keir Beck serves as the Stunt Coordinator, and Troy Lindsay Brown, Justin Eaton, Logan Holladay, and Ben Jenkin serving as Gosling and Johnson’s stunt doubles.
“The Fall Guy” is loosely based on an 80s TV show of the same name, starring Lee Majors and Heather Thomas, both of whom make a cameo appearance in the film. For a film that wants to focus on the stunts and the people that bring them to life, “The Fall Guy” certainly spends way too much time trying to make everything make sense. The narrative is an absolute disaster, plodding along with incoherent connectivity that delivers more questions than answers. For how simple and straight forward things should be, Leitch doesn’t seem to know how to edit himself down to brass tacts. “The Fall Guy” is bloated and begins to feel its length with an almost exhausting repetition. For a rather taut action comedy on paper, this is a 90 minute blockbuster stretched out to over two hours for no real reason. Pearce’s script is in line with a lot of his previous work, and that’s not really a compliment. Most of his films fall into this kind of bloated, overstuffed category, being far too chaotic and often squander great premises.
None of this matters though thanks to an absolutely stellar cast working overtime to elevate the material and an incredible eye for stunts and action set pieces. “The Fall Guy” may lack narrative substance, but it is never boring. The film is consistently entertaining, with Gosling and Blunt chewing through their scenery with charm, perfect comedic timing and electric onscreen chemistry. Johnson is having a blast embodying the very fabric of celebrity cliches, and the meta commentary on the industry and art of movie making is laugh out loud funny for people who dig that sort of thing (which I most certainly did). Also the needle drops are stellar, “The Fall Guy” sporting two of my favorite drops of the year with “All Too Well” by Talyor Swift and “Against the Odds” by Phil Collins. When the film fires on all cylinders, it really cooks with pure popcorn adrenaline and entertainment. It’s just good old fashioned fun; fun and funny enough to overshadow its rather glaring misgivings in length and plot.
I won’t spoil it, but there is a line that Johnson delivers near the end that had me absolutely HOWLING. It’s so throwaway you might blink and miss it if you don’t get the reference, but “The Fall Guy” is chock full of industry asides and cinephile easter eggs like it that feel tailor made for someone like me. The ride may not be breaking any new ground, but its a helluva fun ride to take regardless. Any time it starts wind down and slow, a performer or stunt or action set piece launches into high gear to give the jolt back to life you need, pulling you right back into the fun of it all. I love Gosling rekindling his knack for comedy, something many people seem to have forgotten until his performance as Ken in “Barbie.” Gosling has always been able to do both, and while I do enjoy his dramatic work, comedic, freewheeling, silly Gosling is the best Gosling. “The Fall Guy” makes every use of this it can, blending his comedic chops with some great action that both he and his stunt doubles weave in and out of masterfully. Blunt has always had comedic charm, so it’s no surprise she pairs well with this version of Gosling.
It’s really them and stunts that make this work, the comedy and action craft delivering an entertaining pairing that becomes hard not to love. Sometimes movies can be just that: good old fashioned fun. That’s what summer blockbusters are all about, and at the very least, this film knows how to kick off the season right. It certainly has some issues, but I could watch this love letter to stunts and insider Hollywood jokes all day long. It’s got a little something for everyone: comedy, romance, action, and movie making. For all the critical analysis we can lay on cinema, sometimes it’s ok for it to simply entertain. “The Fall Guy” certainly has a lot to say about itself and the stunt industry as a whole, but it does so with such a bang it becomes hard not to fall in love.
And like good old stuntman Seaver said, “It’s not how many times you get hit and knocked down…it’s how many times you get hit and get back up!” Or was that Rocky Balboa?
We should ask his stunt double.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
“The Fall Guy” is in theaters May 4th. You can watch the trailer below.
