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.

In short: The Gray Man (2022)

A CIA killer (Ryan Gosling, whose popularity I’ll never get, because he doesn’t act in any sense of the word beyond acting as some sort of hole in a movie for a viewer to project whatever into and has little charisma I’d see) finds himself first on the run from his own people, and then looking to free the kidnapped sick child of his mentor (Billy Bob Thornton) while fighting off the the private sector incompetents of bad guy Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans, clearly having a blast with the villain role; also at least some recognizable character traits). A pacemaker with GPS is involved, so you can imagine how the rest of the script is.

On the corporate franchise side of movie making, brother duo Anthony and Joe Russo are responsible for some of my favourite Marvel movies – I’d even go so far as to call Captain America: The Winter Soldier one of the best action movies ever made in Hollywood – but their non-superhero action thrillers for Netflix suggest that Marvel’s presumably heavier hand is exactly what they need. Without that sort of guidance, we get movies as bad as Extraction, or as aggressively tedious as this one, a movie that somehow manages to make two hours of action sequences seem long and pretty boring. At least the incessant noise keeps one awake.

It doesn’t help here that none of the action sequences are anything more than big budget competent, lacking in inventiveness, interesting staging and the spark that makes a movie explosion fun, nor that the not-Bourne super spy script all of the action is based on is mostly pretty damn terrible. At least, it has more holes than most victims of Hansen’s or Six’s shoot-outs, does character motivation so badly, it would have been better not to even bother, and wastes a mostly great cast on nothing whatsoever. Because that’s not enough, the movie is also excruciatingly long-winded, and jumps from country to country without ever making any use of the different locations. This could all have happened in a warehouse and not looked or felt any less interesting.

Three Films Make A Post: Mary's Evil is Beyond Legend

The Dead Next Door (1989): For people with sympathy and tolerance for microbudget horror, and even though this one’s budget actually wasn’t quite as micro as you’d assume, J.R. Bookwalter’s film is one of the pioneering efforts of this particular type of indie horror. Not just because this is one of the early films of its kind, but because Bookwalter operates on a comparatively epic scale, with ambitious scenes and a plot that actually takes place in more than just a living room and someone’s garden. The script about the misadventures of the curiously accident-prone “Zombie Squad” in early post-zombie-apocalyptic Ohio (and a bit of Washington, D.C.) is certainly goofy and a bit silly, but the writing comes over as so good-natured and likeable these things become some of the film’s true virtues, as is pacing that doesn’t waste the audience’s time. The actors were overdubbed in post-processing, giving the affair a certain Italian genre movie vibe, while action and special effects are some of the best semi-professional work I’ve ever set eyes on.

It’s also certainly the best-looking film ever shot on Super-8.

The Nice Guys (2016): Rather on the other side of the budget divide dwells this Shane Black action comedy taking place in a fever dream version of the 70s. It’s a bit too nasty to its characters for my general taste in comedy (cruelty is only very seldom funny unless you’re a bully or a serial killer) but I do admire the way Black from time to time manages to move his – really rather well acted – lead caricatures Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling into some actually human emotional beats and scenes without breaking a sweat. And even soft-hearted old me can’t deny how well the film manages to create its world. Now if it were only populated by people I – or the film – cared about.


Mr. Right (2015): Paco Cabezas’s film does work better for me than Black’s does. It’s still full of the old comical ultra-violence but I find the black humour warmer, the characters definitely more likeable in their amorality. The way the film mixes the general absurdities of action movies with killers as heroes and your run of the mill romantic comedy is rather effective – and very funny – too, Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick making for a pleasantly odd couple. And who wouldn’t root for one of those, right? Particularly when they have to kill their way through a bunch of lovingly caricatured gangsters and Tim Roth looking to have a lot of fun doing his particular villain with a dash of tragedy. Why, even RZA brings his best acting game.

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Drive (2011): Well, I doubt anybody needs me to fall in with the chorus of praise for Nicolas Winding Refn's film; its class, the excellence of Ryan Gosling's (with the rest of the cast certainly not to be ignored) performance and the quality of Refn's direction are self-evident. What isn't as often mentioned when talking about Drive is how perfect a fit Refn as a director is for adapting a James Sallis novel (despite the changes). Both excel at telling sparse seeming, yet complex stories who only look minimalist when you're not looking at them closely enough. Both men's work reminds of poetry, if you can imagine poetry that's as shockingly and horrifyingly violent as Drive becomes during its second half. I don't generally call films masterpieces (because I don't believe in them or the canonical order in art their existence implies), but with this one I'm really tempted.

Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man with the Plan (2006): Despite its awkward title, Mike (Absentia - my write-up of that film will be coming up shortly) Flanagan's short film about a man (Scott Graham) haunted by his demons, a white room and an evil mirror is a really excellent piece of work. Tight, weird with a capital W, and as dynamically directed (and edited) as anything taking place in a single room - and, one could argue one person's mind - can be, it's the sort of thing I'm bound to enjoy. It's also the sort of thing that could only work as an independently produced short film - adding anything to it on a budgetary level or in the number of script pages would only reduce the film's tenseness and focus.

Red Balloon (2010): Another short film (available to see here), but of a very different style than Oculus. This film about the dangers of babysitting is slick in a Hollywood way where Oculus seems more personal, pushing all suspense buttons with professional care and craft. Actually, it's the sort of short that seems made as a demonstration that yes, one can be trusted with money for a larger production, and less because there's a story to be told for which the short format is ideal. It's hardly the fault of the two directors I'm temperamentally inclined to find exactly such a thing very, very boring, even if it is very, very well crafted (which Red Balloon is).

 

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