Thoughts on The Fall Guy (2024) · 5:17am May 16th

This was fun. Not an all-time great, but still, a good and stylish way to kill two hours.

Ryan Gosling is enjoyable as the lead, Colt Seavers, a stuntman roped into a moviemaking project (directed by his ex, more on that in a bit), and forced into an investigation when the lead actor (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, clearly channeling all manner of douchey Hollywood stars) has disappeared and the whole shoot is at risk of being shut down. Naturally, there's skullduggery afoot, and soon Ryan is in a race to save his life, the movie shoot, AND his romance as well.

For me, the MVP of the movie was Emily Blunt as the movie director Jody Moreno, and Ryan Gosling's ex. She carries her scenes with a lot of charm, and several of the romantic comedy aspects between Jody and Colt really entertain. (My personal favorite would have to be a split-screen phone call, though for pure comedy value nothing tops an early scene where poor Colt has to re-do a fire stunt over and over again. Wow. )

Winstone Duke plays a fun role as Colt's best friend, having a fun little trait of peppering his dialogue with movie references. Everything from "Memento" to "The Fugitive" to "Rocky." Simple, yes, but it works nicely for a professional in moviemaking and adds some nice humor to the movie's leaning on the fourth wall.

The movie does a lot of commentary on Hollywood, for good and for ill. (The director is a former stuntman and it's pretty easy to see this movie as a tribute to the guys behind the stunts, and other practical effects. It's also easy to tell who the bad guys are, though to be fair it's not like the movie is trying to be a deep mystery.) The attack on Hollywood's brand of villainy comes into play very nicely for the finale, with a pretty fun sequence about the stunt crew and pyrotechnics experts helping to save the day. One imagines David Leitch really having enjoyed conceiving of, and executing, that whole sequence.

There's several things I enjoyed in this movie, though I will admit I'm a little bummed that I didn't enjoy it more, or at least, not enough to give it a higher score. "The Fall Guy" is fun, and charming in enough places to keep you engaged, and has some very fun set pieces in stunt work for sure, but I wouldn't call it a "great" movie by any means. Maybe it could have focused more on Gosling and Blunt's romance, or else really went in on the Hollywood satire, but whatever the case, it's not quite a masterpiece... but still fun enough to make me look on it with fondness all the same.