Review: The Fall Guy

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.

David Leitch's stunt-heavy "The Fall Guy" is an enjoyably silly start to the summer season, an action-comedy with two likable leads who have good chemistry, a whole lot of impressive stunts, some good tongue-in-cheek humor, and a welcome vibe of not taking itself too seriously at a time when most blockbusters are stone faced to a fault.

For a big budget action movie, its premise is pretty simple: Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a legendary stunt man who has a big crush on a camerawoman, Jody (Emily Blunt), with whom he has worked on a number of action movies and had a brief affair. Colt has long been the stunt double for an arrogant and reckless actor named Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but after a stunt goes wrong and Colt breaks his back, he disappears from the movies and takes a gig parking cars at a Mexican restaurant.

Not only did Colt walk away from the industry, but he ghosted Jody because he couldn't find the right thing to say after disappearing and then waited too long to get back in touch without things being awkward. Things at first are indeed awkward with Jody after he's drawn back into the fold for a film shoot in Australia by Ryder's long-time manager, the shady Gail (Hannah Waddingham), but the two begin to click as they try to think up an ending for the science fiction epic that marks Jody's first directing gig.

But no sooner than he has arrived and pulled off a daring stunt, Ryder disappears and Colt is enlisted by Gail to find out where the actor has gone. It turns out that Ryder has become mixed up with a group of criminals, and Colt finds himself grudgingly mixed up in it as well. After a death occurs, Colt must juggle trying to help Jody finish her film with staying alive as Ryder's criminal pals start making threatening advances.

The film boasts a solid supporting cast, including Stephanie Hsu as an feisty assistant, Winston Duke as a stunt buddy of Colt, and a small dog that can get pretty vicious when given commands in French. "The Fall Guy" not surprisingly boasts some jaw-dropping stunt work, considering that Leitch started off as a stunt double for a number of big-name actors. The picture is a highly entertaining love letter to a group of people who often get the short end of the stick in the movie industry. The academy is finally going to hand out an Oscar for stunt work and it seems long overdue.

It's nice for the summer movie season to kick off with an enjoyable movie that is not based on an existing property - there will be plenty of time for those throughout the season, I'm sure - and that prioritizes not only people (Gosling is especially charismatic here, and Blunt is also quite good) but also old-fashioned stunt work, rather than an overabundance of special effects and blue-screen work. 

It's also a nice break from the overly serious blockbuster films of recent years in that it's unapologetically goofy and light-hearted - well, as light-hearted as a movie with this much violence can be. It's also fun, a trait with which a lot of big budget spectacles of recent years haven't much concerned themselves.