If there were ever to be a love letter written for the purpose of expressing nothing but recognition and gratitude for the behind the scenes artists known as stuntmen and stuntwomen, this movie would certainly symbolise it. And who better to direct such an important movie, than a former stuntman themself, than David Leitch.
Since his directorial debut back in 2017 with 'Atomic Blonde', starring Charlize Theron, David Leitch has provided us with a small handful of movies that seem to be unintentionally creating their own sub-genre, mixing the likes of spine-chilling action and laugh out loud comedy. Following the success of 2022's 'Bullet Train', we are now gifted with the treat that is 'The Fall Guy'.
'The Fall Guy' revolves around the life of Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), your everyday stereotypical stuntman who lives off nothing but protein and testosterone. The man who risks his life everyday for a living takes quite the hit (literally) as he suffers a bone-breaking incident that would see him temporarily retire from stunting and potentially lose the love of his life.
In this movie, we see Emily Blunt portray Jodi Moreno, a camera-operator-turned-filmmaker looking to claim critical and box office success with her directorial debut, 'Metastorm'. Things seem to be going well for the director until Seavers arrives on her film set, employed to throw his body at rocks and be set on fire daily as the stuntman to acting sensation, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).
The arrival of this movie is unique timing, seeing as though both Gosling and Blunt are both off the back of Academy Award nominations for their supporting performances in 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer'. It could be said that their collaboration on this movie is the truce that the film industry required, in order to put every 'Barbenheimer' feud to rest for good.
The back-and-forth improvisation and comedic timing that we see from Gosling and Blunt throughout this movie is nothing short of delightful. And although the moments of humour we experience between our two protagonists does make the movie an all-round enjoyable experience, it does beg the question: Where would the film be without it?
Although 'The Fall Guy' must be praised for it's unique and impressive action sequences, it mustn't be left unspoken that the film does seem to rely too heavily on the likes of Gosling and Blunt to keep the comedic moments afloat too often throughout it's runtime of 125 minutes.
Taylor-Johnson and Winston Duke do their best at contributing towards the comedic relief of this movie, but ultimately, I struggle to see how this movie would maintain half of it's success amongst audiences had it not been for the comedic craftsmanship of Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
As for the storyline, whilst it does keep our audiences enticed enough to the point where the movie ticks along well enough, it is not without it's major plot holes that refuse to be acknowledged. Throughout the run time of just over two hours, there are a vast number of character decisions and plot points that fail to make sense or maintain any sense of reality.
Having said that, Leitch is not attempting to fool anyone with this film by labelling it as 'The Godfather: Part 4' or claiming that it is the next best thing to come out of our cinema screens since 'Oppenheimer'. The fact that the movie knows full well exactly what it is bodes very much in it's favour. That being an action/comedy that bends the element of reality numerous times throughout, but only with the best intentions of making our audience laugh.
Will every plot twist or storyline event make sense? No. Will you leave the cinema with a handful of realistic solutions that could have easily seen our protagonists wriggle themselves out of a dilemma? Yes. But what you will ultimately leave the cinema with is a sense of satisfaction that you have just seen a light-hearted action-packed comedy backed up with an exceptional soundtrack, lead by two of the industry's hottest actors who seem to do very little wrong these days.
Overall Rating: 7.5/10
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