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Why am I watching The Fall Guy, you may ask yourself while doing so. The likely answer comes in three parts. 1) Co-producer and star Ryan Gosling lent his professional clout to winning a green light for this affable action comedy, vaguely based on the mostly forgotten 1980s TV show of the same name. 2) Gosling stars alongside Emily Blunt, the roles of the pair in Barbie and Oppenheimer respectively having convinced Universal Pictures to deploy a serious marketing budget. 3) Many months may have passed since you read this review, and you are now catching up with the film during a long-haul flight. It’s the perfect setting for this high-altitude fluff, made to distract you from turbulence.
Just don’t dwell on the mid-air fate of Gosling’s stuntman hero Colt Seavers, who begins the story with a fall from grace that breaks his back and ruins his relationship with camera-operator girlfriend Jody (Blunt). Prepare too for déjà vu. Back in 2011, neon-lit thriller Drive already saw Gosling take a signature role as a brooding stunt driver. Other memories are more recent. While the star has spoken of moving on from Barbie, we soon find him on another white sand beach, once more craving the attention of a blonde high-achiever.
This time his lovesickness is trained on Jody, his ex now enjoying a career breakthrough in Sydney, directing her debut movie with stunts by Seavers. For Gosling, the role is a relaxed spin on an old persona, teasing his own line in wistful machismo. Blunt has more grunt work to get through, having to make at least a little plausible a character the story insists has risen near-instantly from film crew obscurity to helm a lavish blockbuster.
You’re right: I am over-thinking a movie designed to get Gosling from one madcap bit to another. Longing gazes are spliced with kickassery, well played for laughs. The Hollywood satire sharpens a notch with a comic subplot, in which an idiot movie icon lies about doing their own stunts. (Listen out for Tom Cruise being unrelatedly namechecked twice, just to clarify that nobody means him.)
Amid the bedlam, the script asks us to salute the unsung stunt workers who imperil themselves for our fun. (Director David Leitch was once one himself. Later, he made the annoying caper Bullet Train.) The irony is that the film mostly ends up affirming the value of brand-name movie stars. The frictionless charisma of Blunt and Gosling is what makes it tick: two stellar presences nervelessly bouncing and crashing off each other.
★★★☆☆
In UK and US cinemas from May 3
Sophie Anderson, a UK-based writer, is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
