The Fall Guy (2024)

Having broken his back during an accident, Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), stuntman to the insufferable star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), does recover bodily, but finds himself in lowest of spirits. During his recovery he has driven away his girlfriend, budding director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), and has decided to park cars for a living instead of jumping canyons in them.

However, Ryder’s manager and producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham) lures Colt back to stunt work by the simple expediency of telling him Jody asked for him to work on her directorial debut Metal Storm, a SF epic about the power of love, violence and cheesy speeches, that does, alas, seem to lack Jared Syn. What the film also lacks is Tom Ryder, for he has gone missing – possible on a drug bender – which wouldn’t be atypical for the guy. Gail wants Colt to find him before anyone else notices he is gone (most people on set don’t). All the while, Jody is rather nonplussed to find her ex-boyfriend suddenly working on her movie – she certainly didn’t ask for that.

Soon, Colt will need all of his considerable stunt person superpowers to survive his surprisingly dangerous search for Ryder; in between being drugged, getting run over by cars, and so on, there’s also a bit of a possibility to restart the relationship with Jody he so efficiently sabotaged after his accident on a more equal footing.

Saying I went into David Leitch’s The Fall Guy with low expectations would be selling them rather high, even though I loved Leitch’s Bullet Train. The combination of modern high budget action comedy, a needless revival of a mildly beloved old IP (shudder), and Ryan Gosling (whose general unwillingness to express emotions via facial expression or body language simply isn’t my idea of acting except in very specific circumstances) did not promise a good time.

But here’s the thing: Gosling emotes! Well, that’s one of several things, as a matter of fact. Instead of the completely empty pap I expected, this is a lovely cross between two genres that only very seldom meet – the romantic comedy and the action comedy, and one where both genres are equally important to the film.

That Leitch does absurd action very well is no surprise; his expert sense of romantic timing very much is. But then, Drew Pearce’s script goes out of its way not to reproduce the way relationships are usually treated in action movies, nor does he fall into the trap of many a male-centric romcom where the protagonist’s girlfriend-keeping character change feels self-serving and dishonest. Colt Seavers isn’t just working out his bullshit, he’s also genuine about his feelings and going through that whole parallel action comedy plot at the same time; Blunt’s Jody is never just a prize but has some actual agency, as well as dreams and hopes that belong to her. Blunt’s also as fun in the Romcom stuff as she is in the more action oriented bits of the film. In fact, the way romcom and action comedy collide and change one another’s clichés is one of the most surprising elements here – much of the film can be read as meta commentary on the differences and parallels of genres that are typically female and male-coded, and suggests some things they might learn from each other.

The absurd action for its part is as expected: fun, fast, often very clever with the stupid jokes and very much centred on actual stunt work instead of CG, as is only right and proper when it comes to a film about a stuntman. The film’s also genuinely well plotted, with a central mystery that works and an eventual solution to our heroes’ problems that very consciously uses movie magic to come to a proper movie solution.

Because that’s what The Fall Guy is as well: a paean to genre films, the absurd things we are willing to love, the clichés we embrace and those we embrace while laughing about them, the things we want to believe in movies, the special moment when something preposterous and artificial touches one’s heart just as if it were the real thing, only better.