The Fall Guy review – good stunts, appalling script

David Leitch got his Hollywood start working in stunts – notably doubling for Brad Pitt in Fight Club and later coordinating on films including X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Tron: Legacy. There’s no doubt that Leitch is exceptionally good at this, and stunt work is something he’s always been extremely keen to champion since his ascent as a filmmaker began when he co-directed John Wick. Leitch has been one of the most vocal advocates for a stunt category at the Academy Awards, and across his filmography the action scenes are reliably the best part of anything he makes.

It was only a matter of time before Leitch managed to make an entire film centred around his love of stuntwork, and it comes in the form of a loose adaptation of a 1980s television series about a trio of performers moonlighting as bounty hunters. In its glossy do-over, The Fall Guy centres on top stuntman Colt Seavers, played by the ever-winsome Ryan Gosling, who opens the film by extolling the importance of his role in a Deadpoolesque audience address (Leitch directed Deadpool 2), and detailing his blossoming romance with promising young camera operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). As the double for self-involved star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, more Zoolander than Highlander), Seaver is the best of the best with a charisma to match, which somewhat irritates the egomaniac actor he’s working for. Yet an on-set accident soon knocks Seavers out of commission and inadvertently leads to his withdrawal from Hollywood completely.

Sometime later, while working as a surly valet, he’s convinced to take a gig on an upcoming sci-fi epic by blathering producer Gail Meyer (an extremely grating Hannah Waddingham), who assures Seavers it’s the perfect way to get back in his ex’s good graces, who has landed her first big directing gig. When he rocks up on set Seavers quickly becomes in a seedy murder plot that forces him to utilise both his brains and brawn to catch a killer and make sure his girlfriend’s film shoot goes off without a hitch.

A fairly rote action-comedy unfolds, with Seaver beating off various goons with help from his best friend/stunt coordinator Dan Tucker (Winston Duke, underutilised but charming as usual) as he tries to clear his name and make call time. Between Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines, and more recently The Grey Man, Gosling has packed in a lot of hours falling on crash mats, and he’s a charismatic enough force to make up for Drew Pearce’s hammy dialogue. His chemistry with Blunt is lacklustre, though, to Blunt’s credit, she has little room to manoeuvre with a role that amounts to ‘flustered English woman’.

Waddingham and Taylor-Johnson are hardly a tantalising set of foils, but there’s plenty of flashy stuntwork to keep audiences’ eyes from glazing over – unfortunately it can’t quite detract from the cheesy one-liners, which veer into outright poor taste with a quip from Waddingham’s character about the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard assault case. It’s unclear why the team felt this was a necessary line to keep in – making light of a recent domestic violence court case is a weird flex for a mainstream Hollywood comedy.

It’s a shame that the script can’t keep pace with the stuntwork, which is often impressive, and certainly, there’s a long history of the hard work that goes into coordinating and pulling off tricky action shots (and indeed shooting them). But while The Fall Guy is an affectionate and occasionally entertaining tribute to the people professionally flipping cars and taking punches, it neglects the other crucial aspects of what makes a film enjoyable, resulting in a popcorn flick that quickly fades from the memory once the credits roll, sadly lacking the staying power of any of the action greats it references.

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