Year of Release: 2024
Director: David Leitch
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Hannah Waddingham, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu, Winston Duke, Ben Knight, Matuse, Adam Dunn, Zara Michales
Genre: Action, Comedy
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 3
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
Director David Leitch who started off his directorial career with the trifecta of "John Wick" (he was one of the creative forces behind it), "Atomic Blonde" and "Deadpool 2", has since gone into far less interesting territory with his ventures into the "Fast and Furious" universe, followed by "Bullet Train" and now this "The Fall Guy". The film is an adaptation of the TV Show from the 1980s, from writer/producer Glen A. Larson, with the script being authored by Drew Pearce (whose most notable endeavor is co-writing "Iron Man 3" with the wonderful Shane Black). "The Fall Guy" follows the story of Colt Seavers, who is a stunt man for a major action star by the name of Tom Ryder. Colt suffers an accident performing one of the stunts, and retreats from the profession, including cutting contact with his recent girlfriend, Jody Moreno. He's suddenly brought back to that arena, when he's invited to perform stunts for Jody's directorial debut, that is taking place in Sydney, Australia. Colt suddenly realizes it wasn't Jody who invited him back, but instead it was Gail Meyer, Tom's film producer. Gail also reveals that Tom has gone missing, and has been associating himself with a rough crowd, and Colt has to find a way to uncover where he's been. As Colt probes into what has been happening, he realizes there's a lot more to the story than Gail led him to believe, all the while Jody is still very much interested in him, but since having her feelings hurt, is also lashing out at him.
Ryan Gosling was previously in a film by the name of "The Nice Guys", written and directed by Shane Black, where his comedic timing, charm and easy chemistry with his co-stars worked on every level (in this case with Russell Crowe). It wasn't the success it deserved to be, but the energy that film had, is what is missing on this take with "The Fall Guy". The rather rudimentary script doesn't help much, but this film suffers from these innumerable winks that the characters are sharing between each other, since it's basically a film within a film, one that always thinks that it is far more clever than it actually is (you can tell the author of the script is thinking "I wonder if the audience will realize this reference or this behind the scenes reference"). The script also tries to capitalize on this marriage of screwball romantic comedy with a big action picture (for a better reference of a film within a film check the maligned John McTiernan film "Last Action Hero"), however the banter between the central characters goes on indefinitely, and a certain point it poses the question why these two annoying individuals are even at the center of the narrative. It's a film that has tone issues, not only from the different styles that have been previously mentioned, but also because it attempts to be somewhat violently graphic, in tandem with being "movie violent", aka, sanitized in its depiction of violence. In essence, this tries to be a Shane Black film, without having the wit, humor, intelligence or ability to be a Shane Black film (or at least the best of his films). It's no "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", and it's definitely not "The Nice Guys", since all of the characters of this film barely exist beyond the one sentence paragraph they've been granted in the synopsis of the script. Ryan Gosling tries to make the best of this mess, but Hanna Waddingham and Stephanie Hsu are the most interesting performances in this over-bloated mess (and just a few notes on a few performers, namely Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who even after all these years is still a terrible actor, and Emily Blunt's distracting face, who seems to be getting rounder and rounder with each film she appears in). The production team is rather generic, which is a bit of a letdown for a director who has always been rather stylish in his endeavors. This is a miss for everyone involved.
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