Title – The Fall Guy (2024) 

Director – David Leitch (Atomic Blonde) 

Cast – Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Winston Duke 

Plot – Down on his luck stuntman Colt Seavers (Gosling) is reunited on his return to the movie industry with old flame/director Jody Moreno (Blunt) but their potential rekindled romance is disrupted by Seavers increasingly dangerous quest to discover what’s happened to missing movie star Tom Ryder (Taylor-Johnson).   

“I’ll buy you a drink after this is over!”

Review by Eddie on 26/04/2024

Inspired by the Lee Major’s starring TV show of the same name that ran for 5 seasons from 1981-86, David Leitch’s modern take on The Fall Guy comes at a time when Hollywood is crying out for an American summer blockbuster hit that ignites box office booths when most others are floundering and while there’s a chance this Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt starring action comedy does make a decent dent at the global box office, Leitch’s well-intentioned big budget affair is sadly another recent blockbuster that doesn’t hit the mark. 

An amalgamation of a bevy of ideas, Fall Guy acts as a crowd-pleasing action ride, a generic romantic comedy centred around Gosling’s long-suffering stuntman Colt Seavers and Blunt’s up and coming director Jody Moreno, a love letter to the stunt community and an underdeveloped mystery that see’s Seavers enlisted to help track down Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s missing Hollywood leading man Tom Ryder.

With this in mind, no one can accuse Leitch’s film of resting on its laurels but despite appearing to have its heart in the right place, too much of Fall Guy feels forced, underdeveloped and at the same time overstated, making this a a film likely to appease easy going audiences initially but a film that disappears from people’s memories before a second thought. 

A one time stuntman himself, David Leitch has found success over the past decade with his ability to instil many of his films with the right amount of zany energy, comedic chops and action beats, with his work on successful outings such as Deadpool 2 and the highly underrated at the time Bullet Train perfect examples of the type of film Fall Guy wants to be and with it missing the mark in many of the elements that made those films so much fun, at the very least you’d expect the action heavy segments of Fall Guy too fly but even the key action moments here never take off, with no set pieces likely to be considered again once the next scene rolls around. 

Trying to be so many things at any one time, there’s a distinct lack of focus that embodies Fall Guy’s long in the tooth runtime that runs out of steam early, picks up momentum when Seavers rolls into Sydney after a long term hiatus in the industry and then loses significant amounts of good will and energy when a quite terrible last act takes hold, with this lack of focus constantly bringing any wins the film has back to earth, no more evident than in the films constant back and forwards between events on the set of Seavers and Moreno’s new movie, Seavers investigation into Ryder’s disappearance and then Gosling and Blunt’s forced feeling will they or won’t they romance. 

With so many things going on and film struggling to deliver on the spectacle front, hopes of Fall Guy being saved on the comedic front are not too be found with minor chuckles the order of the day as many of the films big set-ups and over-delivered back and forwards lacking the smarts or charms that could’ve made even some of the minor potential moments something worth celebrating with Fall Guy also in particular marking a moment in Gosling’s career as it stands where his schtick that his finely attuned over the most recent parts of his career showing genuine wear and tear.

Not playing the exact same pretty dumb he did with The Nice Guys or Barbie or the sleek comedic charmer he did with La La Land or Crazy, Stupid, Love. There’s still a sense of over familiarity with Gosling’s turn as the potentially genius/potentially misguided Seavers and there’s not many moments in Fall Guy where you feel Gosling is really owning proceedings here, marking this role down as a key career moment for the beloved star where he will either continue to bunker down with this type of project or start to recognise it is perhaps time he gave this version of Gosling the A-lister a rest. 

A well-intentioned film and entirely inoffensive, there’s glimpses of the film Fall Guy just might have been and there’s going to be some fans of the film unearthed no doubt but overall this films the exact type of forgettable Hollywood film the industry really didn’t need right now. 

Final Say – 

Failing to excel in the action or comedic stakes and unable to do much with the chemistry between Gosling and Blunt that could’ve been mined far greater than it was here, The Fall Guy is a disappointingly lacklustre and disjointed outing that has strangely been greeted with a far kinder critical reception than it deserves. 

2 unicorns out of 5