The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy; action comedy, USA, 2024; D: David Leitch, S: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Winston Duke, Stephanie Hsu

Colt Seavers is a stunt double for Hollywood star Tom Ryder, and is in a relationship with camerawoman Jody. However, after he falls down from inside a building in a stunt gone wrong, he is injured and spends over a year in rehabilitation, and loses contact with Jody. He is persuaded by producer Gail to travel to Sydney and be a stunt double for Jody's first film as a director, a Sci-Fi epic about a love story between a man and an alien woman. Gail sends Colt to search for Tom who went missing, and then finds a video clip in which a drunk Tom hit and killed a stunt man, but later the clip is changed using a deep fake to insert Colt's face on Tom, so that Colt is now wanted for murder. Colt realizes he was framed by Gail to deflect from blame for Tom, a major star, but is able to trick Tom into admiting the murder. Colt also makes up with Jody.

The film adaptation of the popular TV series "The Fall Guy" starring Lee Majors (who has a cameo in the closing credits) is a fluent, energetic and clever action comedy film about the neglected profession of stuntmen, which is why it was described as a "film by fans and for fans of stunts", though the director David Leitch is much more inspired in conjuring up stunts than humorous moments. While somewhat overstretched, "The Fall Guy" has several unusual plot twists which make it unpredictable, and thus the viewers don't always know how a certain situation might unravel. One example is the great sequence where stuntman Colt (very good Ryan Gosling) investigates and lands at a night club, where he meets a drug dealer and wants to leave, but the former laments: "Nobody ever wants to talk to the drug dealer!" Colt then obliges him, has a drink, but then starts having hallucination and realizes that the drug dealer put drugs inside his drink, as two thugs appear to take him away. In any other typical movie, the hero would have a blackout and wake up on a different location, but not here—even though he is disoriented and drugged, Colt is still able to beat up the thugs (!), anyway, even in tune to psychedelic colors and effects accompanying his punches. There are also other unusual and creative moments (after being attacked in an apartment, Colt neutralizes the weapon by jamming the sword inside the wall and removing its handle away; the cool filming of the Sci-Fi movie with the Sydney Opera House in the background), and even a little bit of metafilm touches (Jody phones Colt to ask him if she should use a split screen in her film, and then the split screen shows them both in the frame), though the storyline is not always logical (even if Colt's face was inserted on Tom's body using a deep fake in the video clip of the murder, the guests at the party could still testify that it was actually Tom who killed the stuntman, not Colt; Tom's coerced "confession" at the end cannot be used as evidence at a court). "The Fall Guy" could have been funnier, with more elaborated gags, yet it is still a loving homage to all the unknown heroes who never get credit for the job they do.

Grade:++