Movie review: The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy is a 2024 action-comedy movie written as an elegy to the stunt profession. It is very loosely based on the 1980s television series of the same name, starring Lee Majors.

The protagonist stuntman this time is Ryan Gosling.

The damsel somewhat in distress is Emily Blunt’s character who is Gosling’s love interest. In The Fall Guy, Blunt is making her directorial debut with a surefire blockbuster smash hit called Metalstorm.

However, everything must go right, or the studio will pull the budget. The antagonist is the producer and the constant threats from the studio.

The Fall Guy, written by Drew Pearce and directed by David Leitch, does not try to be masterful. No one is looking for virtuosity here. Real humans are at work.

You will know of Pearce’s work in Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), Hotel Artemis (2018), Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), and Iron Man 3 (2013).

Leitch is a filmmaker, stunt performer, stunt coordinator, and actor. His directorial debut was made in the action film John Wick (2014). He also directed the films Atomic Blonde (2017), Deadpool 2 (2018), Hobbs & Shaw (2019), and Bullet Train (2022).

Therefore, the four-headed monster (Gosling, Blunt, Pearce and Leitch) make this movie tick; they know their stuff.

In addition to Gosling and Blunt, the crew also features Teresa Palmer, Hannah Waddingham, Stephanie Hsu, and Winston Duke.

The Fall Guy was released in North America on May 3, 2024, by Universal Pictures.

While the film received positive reviews from critics, it underperformed in theatres.

The move grossed $181 million worldwide but cost up to $150 million to make. This means that the movie lost money. There are more costs associated with getting bums in seats and eyes on screens after production is finished. Too bad, because it is an entertaining spectacle, to be sure. Imperfect, but particularly good.

Gosling’s character Colt Seavers is the best stuntman in the business. Jody Moreno, Blunt’s character, is making her directorial debut with Metalstorm, a futuristic space romance.

Before the shooting of Metalstorm, Sevears was in a shoot where Moreno was a camera operator. The star of the movie Tom Ryder, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, sabotaged a stunt injuring Seavers causing him to second guess his career choice and leave the set. But he didn’t just leave the set, he also left his love interest Moreno.

Getting Seavers back to shoot stunts for Metalstorm took conniving by Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddington), the producer. The studio was threatening to pull the budget if Ryder was not brought back in.

One entertaining scene saw a dialogue between Moreno and Seavers where she made him repeat a stunt where he was set ablaze and thrown violently into a large bedrock-like structure and then fell several feet to the ground. Between each retake, an open dialogue took place. The subject was Metalstorm’s script about a female space alien and a cowboy, who were having relationship trouble, spookily resembling Moreno and Seavers’ current relationship status.

As it turns out, the real reason Meyer wanted Seavers in the shoot was not because he was the best in the business, but because she needed him to fetch Ryder. The star of the show was off the shoot, caught up with bad people and bad drugs in Sydney, Aus, where the Metalstorm shoot was taking place.

While the story was a tad long (2:06:00), it was entertaining. As an homage to stunt doubles, some scenes were shot with stunt doubles, and Gosling also did some stunt work himself.

There were the requisite six-pack shots — required visuals when Gosling is working. A car was rolled eight and a half times on the beach in a chase scene, which set a new real-life Guinness World Record.

There were a few surprise cameos at the end, not plot twists, but post-plot jokes.

This movie is as much about the people behind the scenes as it is about anything else. It is funny, romantic, campy, action-packed and delivers a few inside jokes and references to keep the viewer on guard.

The movie also carried an inside dialogue about deepfake, AI, and CGI-heavy moviemaking versus the real thing.

At the end of the day, The Fall Guy is about stunt doubles who do not get movie credits, Oscar nominations, notoriety, or big money, but they often do the heavy lifting and the heavy falling.

The Fall Guy is straight-up fun.