Review: The Fall Guy — Crooked Marquee

There may not be language in existence that can fully summarize the low expectations I brought into David Leitch’s The Fall Guy. (The best I can do on short notice would be “sub-Wonka.”) Here we have a film adaptation of a TV show no one remembers with any particular fondness; it was basically the cheapo rip-off of Hooper for Dukes of Hazzard run-off audiences, and though I was around seven years old when it was on and thus the target audience, all I remember about it is the theme song. Director Leitch redefined the modern action movie with his work on the first John Wick and Atomic Blonde, before setting it back with the likes of Hobbs & Shaw, Deadpool 2, and the loathsome Bullet Train. And sure, it’s Ryan Gosling in the title role — but are we getting Barbie Gosling, or Gray Man Gosling?

That resistance lasted roughly through the end credits; by their conclusion, I was leaning forward in my seat, with a big goofy grin plastered across my face. The Fall Guy may be head-scratching IP exploitation, but the pronounced lack of enthusiasm around the Fall Guy brand (if such a thing even exists) means that Leitch — like Hal Needham, a stuntman-turned-director — was able to just use the title and protagonist as cover to make a fun, throwback action/comedy/romance. It’s entertaining from the first frame to the last.

Gosling steps into Lee Majors’s shoes as Colt Seavers (boy, find me a more ‘80s name), a seemingly indestructible stunt performer whose life goes down the tubes when a big stunt goes sideways. He breaks away from the business and ghosts Jodie (Emily Blunt), his cameraperson girlfriend; 18 months later, he gets a call from his regular producer, who begs him to come back to work. He resists, until he discovers that the film in question is Jodie’s directorial debut, a Mad Max and Dune mash-up called Metal Storm. Once he arrives, though, he discovers his real job: Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the egotistical movie star he typically doubles, has gone off the grid, and if they can’t find him quickly, the movie will be in trouble.

So, he has 48 hours to “save Jodie’s movie and get your life back” by finding Tom Ryder, and no, I do not think it’s a coincidence that the action star with the female producing partner/protector who likes to say he does his own stunts is named “Tom.” Taylor-Johnson is someone I can never buy as a movie star in real life, yet he’s a convincing fictional one, finding just the right notes of hubris and cluelessness.

But of course, it’s Gosling’s show, and he’s terrific — at risk of broken-recording the easiest reference point, his work here has the charming shagginess and shrugging tough-guy quality of Smokey-era Burt Reynolds, before he turned into, y’know, Stroker Ace-era Burt Reynolds. I guess that would make Emily Blunt his Sally Field, and that comparison works as well; their chemistry is electric, and there’s a real screwball, Grant-and-Hepburn energy to their dynamic that makes their scenes crackle with pleasure.

The romance isn’t perfunctory; in fact, the movie would fall apart without it, the plot machinations crumbling to dust if there wasn’t enough heat (briefly!) between them early on to justify his decision to get back in the game solely to reconnect with her. Both Blunt and Gosling are real and grounded enough that the emotional stakes of the relationship — which is not a thing you typically even get in a movie like this — are genuine. So it’s got all that, and the most delightful split-screen sequence since Down with Love.

The result is indisputably Leitch’s best picture since Atomic Blonde, and it makes the subtext of that picture — the necessary, and impossible to fake, quality of joy for the work — into text. This is a guy who’s been on sets for decades, and knows that world inside and out: the camaraderie, the crushes, the inside jokes, the familial atmosphere, even if only for a few months. He takes some welcome risks in the filmmaking as well, most notably occasionally intercutting action scenes with dialogue and character moments, which sounds like a simple editorial act, until you see it done (and done well). And there’s a lovely, sly, self-aware wit to the enterprise (at one point, Colt reprimands the villain, of their evil plan, “It’s plot-heavy, we’re getting tangled in exposition. It loses the audience!”) The Fall Guy isn’t exactly a prestige picture, but it’s an awful lot of well-made fun — a great big stupid beautiful valentine to great big stupid beautiful movies.