The Fall Guy
At a certain point in the second half of “The Fall Guy,” Ryan Gosling’s Colt Seavers criticizes the villain for how needlessly complicated their plan is. He could just as easily be an audience member of David Leitch’s “The Fall Guy,” which takes its name from the 1980s TV show, but is very much a contemporary action film. On the surface, it has a straightforward story, but there are so many twists and turns that seem to go on for so long that our patience can wear thin as we wait for it to inevitably get where it’s going. Thankfully, Gosling and Emily Blunt have charisma in spades, so we at least have two leads we care about.
The film begins with voiceover from Seavers, explaining the job of a stuntman. We see him on set of his latest film, and he is flirting with Jody (Blunt), a camera operator with ambitions of directing. He is the stunt man for star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and his goal is to be the body of stunts, but not the face of the actor. One day on set, he has to redo a stunt because his face could be barely seen, and when it goes wrong, he breaks his back, and gives up stunts. A year and a half later, Jody is directing Ryder in a movie, with his personal producer, Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), in charge of production. She calls Colt, claiming Jody has asked for him personally, but when he gets there, the star is missing, and he begins to be on a mission to figure out the truth.
From that point, the screenplay by Drew Pearce gets needlessly complicated, especially once we start to figure out what’s going on. The film works best when it focuses on the action scenes, and the complexities of stunt work on film sets. Leitch, a former stunt man himself, has made the film a love letter to stunt performers, and the physically-demanding job they do. There are certainly entertaining moments along the way of the larger plot of the film- any time Colt is in Tom’s apartment, for example- but the action is where “The Fall Guy” really delivers, especially when we see Colt and Jody on set together. Gosling and Blunt have strong chemistry that makes us wish the film were more about their rekindling relationship on her directorial debut than a ridiculous mystery that doesn’t engage us nearly as much. There is plenty of tension and drama in making a film without a lot of the story being about where the vein movie star is, and why he might be hiding. (I will say, though, that Taylor-Johnson plays a wonderful ego-driven movie star.) And there is plenty of fire between Blunt and Gosling to keep the film going. Overall, I enjoyed “The Fall Guy,” but I wish it had kept its story simple without as much of the baggage the script weighs it down in.
