'The Fall Guy' review
An action movie with meh thrills is also a romcom that bungles the romance.
Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers, stunt man for “the biggest action star,” dating a camera operator so funny-beautiful she could only be Emily Blunt. “Dream girl, dream job,” is how Colt describes his life when The Fall Guy starts. A stunt double puts up with a lot, though. Egomaniac lead Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) complains Colt doesn’t look like him. The jaw is too different, a bit too “Mr. Potato Head.”
You noticed Gosling’s potato face more in 2011’s Drive, when the pale semi-circle of his bare chin offset his sad little eyes. He was a very different stunt man then, a loner working hard to barely exist. The bedroom synth soundtrack blazed campy-glorious nobility atop his white-satin shoulders, with lyrics swearing this solitary young man was a “real human being and a real hero.” Indie Gosling is my generation’s Atlantis, sunk beneath the lost rivers of history. In The Fall Guy, he’s trim, bleached, stubbly, tanned. Honestly? Baked. I’m kinda glad this is summer’s first flop. Gosling’s system needs a shock. He was so fun as Barbie’s man-toy, but he shouldn’t take the wrong lesson from that success. Another Hollywood Ryan doing sarcasta-violent hottie self-mockery? Ken we not?
Fall Guy begins when the guy falls. A building jump sends Colt to the hospital. 18 months later, he’s out of the stunt game, with serious back problems no one never mentions again. Like Jake Gyllenhaal in Road House, he’s a total wreck with only ten glistening ab muscles. Then producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham) calls him back to work. Colt’s ex-girlfriend Jody (Blunt) is directing Metalstorm, “a sci-fi epic cosmic love story.” They need a new double for Tom. Colt thinks Jody wants to reconnect. Surprises wait on set in Australia. Jody wants him gone. Tom’s disappeared. There’s a corpse in a bathtub. Various men fire various guns. Colt must find the star, fix his relationship, and save the movie.
This sounds awesome. Why isn’t it awesome? Fall Guy makes a terrible mistake. Colt and Jody are perfect for each other. You never buy their break-up, so you can’t believe how long their reunion takes. He let her go because he couldn’t express vulnerability, I guess? She hates him enough to brag about her “bangin’ revenge body,” but he also inspires her. Seeing him doing his typical amazing work leads her to ditch CGI for a one-take battle setpiece.
Imagine if they had real problems. Colt could be a barely-reformed sleeparound cad, trying hard to impress his vengeful-ex boss. Jody actually does punish Colt, redoing a burning-man stunt because exploding him feels “cathartic.” Don’t tell HR, but that’s the right story instinct: Her taking command of his body, him risking any injury as a masochistic apology. Instead, Fall Guy cuts from on-set fireworks to violent antics around Sydney. There’s a sword fight, a bar brawl, a car chase, a harbor rampage.
Jody isn’t in any these scenes. They don’t properly join forces until the finale. Epic miscalculation. Blunt has the better action track record, between her Quiet Places and Edge of Tomorrow’s sci-fi epic cosmic love story. You could swap them easily: Blunt the no-bullshit stuntie, Gosling the brash-yet-desperate director. Instead, this romantic caper gives more action prominence to a ball-biting dog than the female lead.
At my theater, Gosling and director David Leitch appeared in a video introducing the movie as “a love letter to the stunt community.” Leitch was a veteran double himself before John Wick propelled him toward crud like Hobbs and Shaw. Fall Guy adapts an ‘80s TV show, but the subject matter is a passion project. So I hate to admit Leitch doesn’t really nail the crucial stunts. Jody’s single-shot fight scene gets chopped to hell in montage. A 250-foot car jump cuts at the wrong times. End credits reveal the truck fight, which often looks like bad greenscreen, was indeed filmed with greenscreen.
I worry you’ll find wilder stunt work in any random fifty-year-old car-crash thriller. Morally wrong, of course, to admit more actual danger made those old movies better. I’m sure Leitch’s crew did a challenging job well. Fall Guy sings praise for its “unsung heroes.” Still, there’s something a bit defensive about the movie’s advocacy. It would be more convincing if Colt really was finding his limits — if the punches really hurt, and every collision broke a couple more ribs. This dude broke his back. But when he beats up henchmen in a neon club, you could be watching any over-choreographed Wickalike. And this behind-the-scenes movie captures none of the workaday trench humor of life on set. Everyone insists Metalstorm is an awesome passion project for Jody. It looks like Cowboys & Aliens & Skyline.
I sense a fanbase swirling. Failure activates a protective impulse, even when the alleged curio is a wannabe four-quadrant production based on a forgotten TV show. The Fall Guy aims for romance, comedy, studio satire, old-fashioned celebration. It wants its lead to be stupid, sly, handsome, broken, athletic, gangly, cowardly, overconfident. I miss the calmer wonderstruck cool of Drive, which only needed Ryan Gosling to be a real human being.