VERDICT: This Valentine to action-packed moviemaking works best when it ignores the plot and focuses on stunt craft and the explosive rom-com banter between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
Sort of a reverse take on the Ozploitation cult classic Stunt Rock — in which a legendary Australian stuntman comes to L.A. and encounters physically hazardous adventures — The Fall Guy sends L.A. stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) Down Under, where he gets beaten, burned, blown up, hit by cars, and dropped from staggering heights, all in the name of cinema and love.
As loosely based on the 1981-86 Lee Majors–starring TV series as the 21 Jump Street movie was on its small-screen antecedent, The Fall Guy exists to pay tribute to the often-unsung efforts of stuntmen by packing in as many stunts as possible.
Stunt coordinator turned director David Leitch is in his element here, demonstrating a much surer hand with dialogue and comedy than in previous efforts like Bullet Train and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw. He’s aided greatly in that department by the screwball chemistry of Gosling and Emily Blunt, whose scenes are so crackling that it’s inevitably disappointing when Drew Pearce’s screenplay shifts focus from their relationship to the film’s apparent plot.
That plot: Colt and camera operator Jody (Blunt) enjoy a secret on-set romance while making an action vehicle for vain, idiotic movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). When a stunt goes wrong and leaves Colt badly injured, he pushes Jody out of his life rather than accept her love and support. A year and a half later, he’s at rock bottom when he gets a call from Tom’s producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham) to come to Sydney to work on Tom’s latest movie; Colt has no interest, until he hears that Jody is directing and has asked for him to come.
When Colt arrives, he learns Jody had no idea he’d been hired, and she’s less than thrilled to see him again. Gail has a hidden agenda: Tom has gotten mixed up with some shady characters, and Gail begs Colt to go find him. Tracking him down will involve the assistance of Jody’s stunt coordinator Dan (Winston Duke) and Tom’s harried assistant Alma (Stephanie Hsu), and the further Colt investigates, the more he runs into interference with Tom’s head of security Dressler (Ben Knight).
Where The Fall Guy works best is in its playful take on moviemaking and its parallels with and diversions from real life. The film often comments on itself (Colt and Jody discuss shooting a scene in split-screen, in a scene that is itself shot in split-screen) and shows how the characters don’t know how to exist off-set. (Jody works out her romantic frustrations with Colt by shooting take after take of him being set on fire and slammed into a boulder.)
That kind of meta-awareness can be achingly cutesy, but Pearce and Leitch play it with a gentle touch and don’t resort to winking at the audience to get laughs. There’s an acknowledgment throughout of the hyper-machismo of the stunt world, particularly in the cock-rock needle-drops that appear throughout. (Composer Dominic Lewis finds an astounding number of ways to turn KISS’ “I Was Made for Loving You” into a leitmotif.)
One stand-alone musical moment that might have worked better involves Jody singing a beloved ballad of self-pity in a karaoke scene; Leitch for some reason decides to lay the original version of the song over Blunt’s vocals, as though he’s never seen her in Into the Woods. (Between Blunt, Gosling, and Waddingham, there’s enough singing talent here to have turned The Fall Guy into a musical; maybe that’s an idea for the sequel.)
Stunt designer and coordinator Chris O’Hara and his talented team — Ben Jenkin, Justin Eaton, Logan Holladay, Troy Brown, Sunny Sun, Jonathan Eusebio, and Keir Beck — make the most of the spotlight they’ve been given, and they flip cars, speed through Sydney (and across at least one of the city’s many bridges), tumble, collapse, plummet, and speedboat-jump with everything they’ve got to give.
Whether these extravagant moments take place on the set of Jody’s ridiculous-looking sci-fi epic, harnesses and wires on full display, or in the course of the characters’ extracurricular car-chase–based antics, they’re breathtaking examples of the craft. (Stay for the closing credits to see the nuts and bolts of the latter, including Gosling’s raft of stunt doubles.)
Gosling and Blunt play off each other with the kind of chemistry that calls to mind Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell; producers have threatened for years to remake The Thin Man, and while it remains a terrible idea, these two performers are so effervescent together that one imagines they might pull it off.
As in the great ensemble comedies of eras past, our leads are supported by a rock-solid collection of character actors, with Duke and Hsu injecting moments of life into characters who mainly exist to move the story along, and Taylor-Johnson revealing heretofore unrevealed moments of wit with his portrayal of a dim, narcissistic celebrity. Hiding behind a wildly comic wig and glasses, Waddingham has a ball sending up Type-A Hollywood movers and shakers.
At 126 minutes, The Fall Guy overstays its welcome for a bit, but the stunts, the comedy, and the spark between the film’s dynamic leads make the movie a delectable kick-off to the popcorn pleasures of the summer movie season.
