Yes, ‘Guy’!
What’s with David Leitch and these nice, handsome Canadian men?
The Fall Guy
Director: David Leitch • Writer: Drew Pearce, based on the TV series by Glen A Larson
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Winston Duke, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Stephanie Hsu, 94 stunt performers
USA • 1hr 44mins
Opens Hong Kong April 25 • IIA
Grade: A-
In every way that counts, The Fall Guy is the movie stunt performer/coordinator David Leitch – whose stuntwork credits include Blade, Fight Club, Constantine, 300 and Jupiter Ascending – was destined to make. After proving his action mettle with John Wick and Atomic Blonde, he’s stepped up to remake and re-imagine one of the 1980s grandest cheeseball TV series as a love letter to the stunt department on every film ever made. I’m happy Tom Cruise can do his own stunts – good on the l’il guy – but he’s taking someone’s job and these people are increasingly the backbone of the industry. We’re not paying to see thoughtful mid-budget dramas. We’re paying to see spaceships blow up and giant men punch each other beyond human limits before catching fire. Where is the Best Stunts Oscar?
Until that glorious day, we have Leitch’s spin on The Fall Guy, based on the series starring Lee “The Six Million Dollar Man” Majors and Heather Thomas, a sort of pre-Baywatch oddity about a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a crime fighter. It’s the ideal IP for rebooting. You can’t make this shit up, but you can make it fun and frothy, and kind of sexy when you replace Majors with The Better Canadian Ryan, Gosling and give him a love interest in Emily Blunt. Nothing here is new. Nothing is formally daring. But it’s an awfully good time with a lot of pretty people having an awfully good time, backed up with some awesome stunt work. This is how it’s done, Baywatch.
Not just Ken
The Fall Guy starts with Colt Seavers (Gosling, funny, jacked, smart, I hate him) and his girlfriend, camera operator Jody Moreno (Blunt, funny, jacked, smart, I hate her) working on the latest actioner starring douchebrah movie star Tom Ryder (perfectly embodied by the frontrunner in the race to be the next James Bond, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Leitch’s Bullet Train) when a stunt goes wrong and ends their professional and personal relationship. About 18 months later, Jody is making her directorial debut, “Metal Storm” – and I’d watch the shit out of that – when her producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso) and Colt’s best mate, head stunt coordinator Dan (Winston Duke, Black Panther) conspire to get Colt back to work… and maybe back with Jody. Off he goes, but the shoot goes off the rails when set PA Alma (Stephanie Hsu) gets her hands on a mysterious phone video and people start trying to kill Colt. What can a stunt guy do, except deploy his mad stuntman skillz, bust a conspiracy and get the girl back? That’s the very short version. Oh, and all this is often set to various versions of “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” by KISS. This movie could be close to perfect.
Movies about movie stars blurring the lines between fantasy and reality are as old as the hills – Nicolas Cage did something similar in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, 1980’s The Stunt Man waded into these waters – but The Fall Guy has the added frisson of putting the stunts front and centre while still wallowing in goofy, escapist charm. Gosling and Blunt are great as a duo because for some reason their romantic banter isn’t irritating or condescending; writer Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3, Hobbs & Shaw) makes them… hold on to your shorts… equals. But the back-and-forth among everyone else keeps the action buoyant when they’re not on screen together. Dan and Colt feel like old friends and collaborators, Taylor-Johnson gives Tom a kind of clueless, celebrity entitlement that rings true these days, and Waddingham goes big on her Hollywood power producer schtick. In some ways the film is a little inside baseball with its industry shorthand – there are some good barbs levelled at how women directors don’t get to fail with big budget ComicCon Hall H genre actioners – but you don’t have to work in the business to find guys in rubber alien suits chilling on set totally amusing. But ultimately The Fall Guy lives or dies by its action set pieces and stunts (stay for the credits), and it delivers in droves. And considering the news over the last few weeks a good ol’ fashioned good time movie-going experience is just the ticket. Also? #BestStuntsOscarNow. — DEK