Film Review: The Fall Guy

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Mature

Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

This movie should work better than it does.  

The Fall Guy revolves around Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), an affable stunt man who has no ego as he takes abuse from the man he stunts for, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), because he loves his job and is in love with the camera operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt).  However, an accident derails his career and relationship.  But years later, Tom's producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) lures Colt out of retirement to work on Jody's new movie and to help locate a missing Tom Ryder.  What follows is a charming, action-packed, fun adventure.  

But it never fully clicks.

First of all I have to say that this movie has some great leads.  Gosling and Blunt have great chemistry.  Here you have two actors who are working at the top of their level in a summer popcorn movie giving everything that an action/comedy performance needs.  Both of them are incredibly likeable and this helps carry the entire movie.

On top of that director David Leitch once again shows he knows how to shoot action.  Watching his previous work in films like Bullet Train and Nobody, you know that Leitch is going to give everything he can to make sure you have a visceral, high-octane experience.  I found myself getting lost in all the creative set-pieces and I kept looking forward to the next sequence the movie would offer, knowing that it would be fun to watch.  For this, Leitch and the movie earn more respect than it might otherwise deserve.

Ultimately, the movie is a love-letter to stunt-people.  This film takes you behind the scenes and shows you all the ways in which human beings put their saftey and their lives on the line so that the audience can maximize their enjoyment of the movie.  Seeing this movie will give anyone a newfound appreciation of these unsung heroes of the silver screen.

So with all of these things going for it, why does this movie never reach its potential?

The main reason is the script.

Writers Glen A. Larson and Drew Pearce have written a screenplay that they think is very clever.  But it is never as clever as they think it is.

First of all, they pack the movie with a lot of meta-humor.  The characters spend lots of time talking about movie contrivances regarding the film they are shooting.  But these also apply to the movie we are watching.  Sometimes this works out well, as in a split-screen dialogue scene between Gosling and Blunt.  But other times it feels like they are beating you over the head with the analog between the two so that the horse is still being beaten long after it is dead.

Second, the script does not know how to pace.  The first twenty minutes or so hum along very nicely.  But when Colt begins working on Jody's set, she decides to hash out their relationship problems in front of the entire cast and crew through a megaphone.  Not only is this incredibly off-putting, but the script makes the mistake a lot of comedies do: it plays out the joke too long, hoping it will get funnier.  But it doesn't.  There are several times in the movie when everything seems to slow down for a comedy scene (like Colt getting high and seeing unicorns or his multiple attempts to get a key for a hotel room) that isn't all that funny and bogs down the run time.

Finally, the movie doesn't know how to create stakes.  What starts as a simple matter of hi-jinks eventually turns into a matter of life and death.  But instead of feeling greater intensity, we feel less.  Towards the end of the 2nd act, Colt is fleeing for his life on a speedboat.  As he does so, he calls up Jody.  Does he explain that he is being chased by killers for reasons that could affect her life as well?  No.  Instead, he goes on a monologue about why their relationship ended.  The scene is meant to be an emotinal catharsis.  Instead it told me that Colt (and the movie itself) don't take the threat facing him seriously.  And at that point, neither did I.

The movie does a good job pointing out how fame and narcisism can completely warp a person's character.  Colt and Jody's relationship also show how the masculine and the feminine compliment each other and they are not in competition against each other.  The movie also wants to say something about the transcendent nature of storytelling.  This would be a more powerful message if Jody's movie did not look utterly ridiculous.  

Despite its flaws, I enjoyed my time watching The Fall Guy.  I can see myself going back and rewatching some of those fun action scenes.  

But I will probably not sit through the whole movie again.