The Fall Guy: Hit, Smack, Pow

The Fall Guy is one part classic TV show remake, one part summer blockbuster, one part stunt people celebration, and all parts Ryan Gosling. For the uninitiated, the original TV show followed a stunt man (Lee Majors, The 6 Million Dollar Man) who leveraged the skills he learned in the movie industry to become a bounty hunter. The film takes that a completely different direction, with the film’s lead character, Colt Seavers (Gosling), playing a stuntman who comes out of retirement to win back the love of his life, only to be unintentionally thrown into to a conspiracy/mystery action story that allows him to leverage his skills when necessary. The film jumps between several genres, with the overarching love story and central conflict seeing Colt comedically jump through an action based narrative.

From an action movie perspective, this film is a joy to watch. Due to the nature of the film being about stunt performers, almost all of the effects are practical, with the majority of the CGI going to the fictional movie that the characters are making throughout the plot. The end set piece does an excellent job paying its respects to those stunt teams, with the action coalescing on the film set where the characters use the stunt performers and practical effects to their advantage for reasons that wouldn’t make sense without spoiling too much of the plot.

Performance wise, everyone is fantastic. No one gets more to do than Gosling, who plays all of the action and comedy bits perfectly, while also showing his dramatic chops when the love story gets more focus. The other two standouts are Emily Blunt and Hannah Waddingham who are a lot of fun on screen together. Aaron Taylor Johnson plays the actor that Gosling’s character performs stunts for, and he does a fine job, although he’s not in the movie as much as you’d expect. Overall, the performances here are a lot fun, especially when centered around the narrative that plays fast and loose with typical film conventions.

The overall plot is fun; however, it is very predictable. In a film about stunt performers that focuses on the characters, this isn’t necessarily a  bad thing. Where it does become problematic is in the pacing and tonal structure. It almost feels like the film wants to be a comedy at times but then forgets that when it wants to be an action/love story. These genres can work together but The Fall Guy displays this in a messy manner, with some scenes needing to be more serious, whereas others should have been more light. By the time the third act comes around, the shifts in tone become very apparent, although this is when the big action set piece comes into play and the problems become forgettable.

The only other issue with the plot is how by the numbers it can be, with the film consistently making metacommentary about this and then following that up with following the same tropes it just criticized. It almost feels like this movie was supposed to go in one direction and then got switched two-thirds of the way through, something that actually is a plot point about the fictional film that is being made by the characters. In some ways, this seems like ingenious commentary, whereas other times it feels like the filmmakers didn’t understand the script they were working with.

There are also multiple times in the film where characters exposit some lines of dialogue that explain things that are easily seen on screen or could easily be explained by the filmmaking process. It almost was like a producer was watching the first cut of the movie and was distracted on their phone and left the director with notes to film extra pieces of dialogue that shouldn’t need to be in the movie. This leaves certain scenes feeling over explained for little to no reason.

The music in the film is also catchy and fun. You will leave the theater singing Kiss with how many times “I Was Made For Loving You” gets played. There are also a lot of audible callbacks to the original TV show and other stunt performances that will make film fans grin.

The overarching love story works well to tie a lot of these odd ends together, with Gosling’s performance as a charismatic loser providing an easy backbone for sympathy. Gosling gives a great monologue at the end of the second act that is very demonstrative of the kind of heart and charm he brings to his performances. This movie would not be nearly as fun without Gosling in the driver seat.