Sometimes, it feels like Hollywood took the wrong lessons from the “John Wick” franchise. While many producers have tried to recreate lighting in a bottle by focusing on the aesthetics of the trade—suits and neon lighting everywhere on screen—the real lesson is the celebration of the practical and a renewed reverence for the stunt professionals who make those sequences happen on screen. That will no doubt be the legacy of David Leitch, whose evolution as a filmmaker post-”John Wick” has led him to “The Fall Guy,” a bright and energetic action movie about the joy of making action movies.
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Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) has it all: the respect of his peers as one of the best stuntmen in the business and a blossoming relationship with rising filmmaker Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). But when Colt injures his back during a stunt gone wrong, he disappears from that world entirely, leaving behind his peers and Jody to sulk his way through a valet job in Los Angeles.
Colt is surprised to receive a call from film producer (Hannah Waddingham), who begs him to reconsider his retirement. Understandably, Colt is hesitant to return. But Gail has a secret agenda: this new project is the debut of “visionary” first-time director Jody Moreno, and Colt is the only one Gail trusts to keep the troubled production from falling apart. If he plays his cards right, he can regain his confidence and win back the girl—all he has to do is help recover the movie’s missing star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, channeling a mean cross between Jake Paul and Matthew McConaughey).
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“The Fall Guy” is based on an ABC show of the same name which ran for five seasons in the 1980s. In that show, Colt Seavers (then played by Lee Majors) was a full-time stuntman and a part-time bounty hunter. In this movie, Colt reluctantly takes on the responsibilities of the latter to protect Jody’s film. Tom Ryder is all the worst elements of a bad boy movie star rolled into one, and Colt must retrace his cocaine-fueled path across Sydney—including a friendly drug dealer and a luxury apartment riddled with embarrassing Post-it notes—to save the day. Naturally, Colt soon finds himself on the business end of a real-life action movie.
You know, goons with automatic rifles, boat chases in front of the Sydney Opera House. All that good Jason Bourne shit.
From the opening moments of the film, there is the movie, and then there is the movie within the movie. And for all its action pedigree, there are times when “The Fall Guy” seems a bit caught between these worlds. When director David Leitch and company are firing on all cylinders, the film is exuberant in its kinetic storytelling—a breathless marriage of craftsmanship and actors who are never too big for their action movie britches. But then there are entire sequences where the action seems shockingly lifeless and every bit the brand of lifeless Netflix faff that “The Fall Guy” set out to renounce.
Surprisingly, “The Fall Guy” shines brightest when it is at its most meta. Gosling moves through the film’s first half as a modern-day Buster Keaton; in the film’s funniest sequence, Judy repeatedly demands that he redo a key stunt to savor the endless repetition of Colt being lit on fire and thrown into a rock (the sepia tone apocalypse unfolding in the background is the perfect counterpoint for their cautious reconciliation). But when the scope of the movie expands—pulling in professional hitmen and a murder plot involving Ryder—the story loses its spark even as the stunts become more ambitious.
That’s the disconnect. At its heart, “The Fall Guy” is not an action movie—it’s a romantic comedy that just happens to be directed by one of the most accomplished genre directors of the decade. Had Leitch and company never stepped off the movie set and just let the film be the story of two professionals falling (back) in love at work, the movie could have easily had the best of both worlds. As it stands, “The Fall Guy” is a wonderful movie about love and collaboration mashed up with an aggressively fine summer thriller.
Still, you gotta give “The Fall Guy” this: there may be formulaic stories, but there are rarely formulaic stunts. Leitch and company run through their entire bag of tricks, pulling out canine action sequences, a gunfight designed around blanks, and a brawl in an untethered piece of construction equipment that harkens back to the reckless days of Hong Kong action cinema. These set pieces may lack the harmonious blend of action and narrative found earlier in the movie, but they still can be a lot of fun to watch—especially when Gosling taps into the self-effacing daredevil persona he perfected in “The Nice Guys.”
It’s a rare thing to knock a studio film for not being more about Hollywood, but sometimes them’s the breaks. People are probably going to love “The Fall Guy,” and the film should help raise attention for the art of stunt performers—and, in a perfect world, a whole lot of grassroots support for a Best Stunts category in every major award show. To paraphrase the stuntman’s credo in the movie, they may have played it a little safe, but everyone did their job, and everyone can go home with their head held high. [B-]