#MovieReview: Easy-watching action fun in The Fall Guy
The plot is largely incidental, which instead serves as a chance to platform larger and larger stunts.
The Fall Guy is a silly, but thoroughly enjoyable love letter to movies and the people that make them.
Directed by former Hollywood stuntman David Leitch, the movie is basically a series of set pieces connected only by the on-screen charisma of Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
Luckily, the duo have chemistry in spades and make the non-action scenes watchable where they might otherwise have fallen flat.
The Fall Guy follows recently retired stuntman Colt Seavers (Gosling), who is pulled back into the movie industry to track down the Hollywood star he used to double.
Of course there is more to the job than he expects and he quickly finds himself in over his head.
But being the hardy “fall guy” who has long taken hits as his career, Seavers proves difficult to keep down and the entire web of intrigue soon becomes unspun.
The plot is largely incidental in this movie however, which instead serves as a chance to platform larger and larger stunts.
A fair portion of these are done on the movie set within the movie, giving Leitch a chance to take us behind the scenes and show us how difficult the job he once held was.
Stuntmen and -women are a largely underappreciated part of the moviemaking process in real life, and it is a neat trick to include them so prominently in the movie.
The hope, one would imagine, is that audiences will gain insight into the process and help sway public opinion on long-fought-for recognition for stunt performers.
And the stunts in The Fall Guy largely meet those lofty ambitions, leaving the viewer thinking “how the hell did they do that?”
There was one CGI-laden scene that looked completely out of place and more akin to Leitch’s last film Bullet Train, but the majority are tactile and hard hitting.
And there is an undercurrent of ‘knowing’ comedy in this movie that hits the right tone, as opposed to feeling grating when delivered by, say, Ryan Reynolds in any movie this decade.
The Fall Guy is an easy-watching, light-hearted action romp with a believable love story in the middle.
Watch it in theatres to get the full experience if you can.
Rated PG-13 for Violence and Drug Use.
3.5/5.
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