Introduction

I honestly can’t think of two middle-aged actors that I love more than Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Gosling’s charisma is only rivaled by another Ryan (Reynolds). But Gosling has the acting chops to be hand-picked by the best directors working. David Leitch’s new film, Fall Guy, happens to have both of them. And it is among the most fun I’ve had in the theater all year. What’s more, it’s a love letter to the under-appreciated stunt workers of Hollywood.

Synopsis

Fall Guy follows Colt Seavers (Gosling), as a retired stunt performer trying to get by after a stunt-gone-wrong broke his back. He’s healing, but then producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddington, Ted Lasso) calls him, desperate to get him to a film set in Australia. An old beau (Blunt) is the director of the movie and Colt finds himself in the position of trying to make amends with her.

Eventually, Gail asks Colt to investigate the missing leading man, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and shenanigans ensue. Colt then goes on a quest of sorts to both win back the love of director and do the thankless grunt work of solving the case of the missing star.

Review

As stated in the intro, the film is a love letter to the unsung heroes of modern blockbusters: the stunt workers. But beyond that, it’s also a very meta script about how Hollywood works in general. As a film buff, I ate up all of it and left the theater feeling immensely satisfied. There is even a running gag about the filmmakers acknowledging that they are having problems with the third act. And there was indeed a problem with the actual film’s third act, which made me give it a pass.

Gosling and Blunt also didn’t disappoint in their performances. Their charisma and chemistry are just so good. Gosling seems to do an insane amount of his own stunts and most of them are breathtaking. Blunt more or less just plays herself, but she is just so charming that I can’t help rooting for her. The rest of the cast is incredible too. They actually had most of the non-starring roles played by actual stunt workers in the industry and my goodness was that a brilliant move.

The musical motif in the film is “I Was Made for Loving You” by KISS. This is an interesting new trend happening where a film revolves around a song and the composer weaves it into the score. Other examples of this include Top Gun: Maverick (Lady Gaga actually got a composer credit because of it) and Tetris (they weave the main Tetris game theme into almost every piece of music). In this case it actually really worked, and I was impressed with Dominic Lewis’ ability to work it in. Beyond this, it was just also a great action score.

The Bottom Line

Fall Guy is a clever, charming, satisfying. Its performances, both stunt and acting, make it worth the price of admission.