Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a superstar leading the feature debut of director Jody Moreno’s (Emily Blunt) passion project Metalstorm.  Producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) calls out to Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), a retired stuntman and old flame of Jody’s to come help save the film by performing some incredible car flips that can be used to promote the film at Comicon.  Once Colt arrives on set, he begins to realize that there is something more going on here; Jody did not specifically request him as he was told, and further, Tom Ryder is missing. 

David Leitch directs The Fall Guy for Universal Pictures, an ode to the long history of stuntmen and the influence they have had on the industry since even its earliest days.  Debuting at South by Southwest, the Drew Pearce-penned script is quick to capitalize on the charm and charisma shared by Gosling and Blunt, and was hailed as a throwback to the Hollywood blockbusters of summers past, but its general release date came a little too early in the season and in a month that was already heavily occupied by Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga that will commandeer the PLF screens and skim the crossover audience. Running 126 minutes, the action-packed, noir-adjacent film is a lot of fun, but like all highs, there comes the inevitable crash, and The Fall Guy is no different. 

The film is understandably packed with spectacle given the nature of the film, but the narrative does take a back seat and with it, character development.  With stunts coordinated by Keir Beck and fights by Jonathan Eusebio and Sunny Sun, The Fall Guy is undeniably exciting and features a variety of stunt work.  With Jonathan Sela behind the lens and Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir in the editing suite, the film really makes a point to let audiences see the action and feel immersed by it, but it never shakes that digital sheen so even though everything is well done, it does not always seem organic in the frame.  Even what was done practically, it sits just on the precipice of the uncanny valley, and we never fully believe what we are seeing.   

What helps keep us invested in The Fall Guy is the variety of stunts which it boasts.  From car rolls, elaborate fighting, and boat chases, there is a lot to take in, and Leitch et al. are not content at just upscaling and rehashing the same stunt style across the run time.  When it is working as a showcase, the film is at its best and it becomes a very enjoyable film to watch because it plays like a highlight reel of the action genre and we can tell the cast and crew are dedicated to the cause and having a lot of fun along the way. 

It is just unfortunate with a cast that has such great chemistry that they are stuck with such a blunt and uninspired script.  Operating with two subplots intertwined with the production of Metalstorm, The Fall Guy follows Clay as he begins to uncover the mystery of Tom’s disappearance and rekindle the romance between him and Jody.  Focusing first on the romance, the most incredible feat of the film is that, despite spending most of the film apart, we actually do believe in and root for Colt and Jody to end up together.  This is absolutely a symptom of their charisma and casting directors Lindsay Graham and Mary Vernieu would have been hard-pressed to find a more dynamic duo to lead the film when they almost exclusively are at odds with one another beyond just the sandpapery interactions in act one of a rom-com. 

The problem with The Fall Guy is that when it is not operating as a showcase, it is barely operating as a narrative. It is set up to be a “movie about the movies” that resonates with general audiences, but it gives so little story that it becomes dull and bland. This is especially apparent in the first act which spends an exorbitant amount of time setting up this plot like it is the framework to the Sydney Opera House when in reality it is about as complex as a house of cards. Instead of building connections, Leitch and Pearce treat the film like Deadpool lite, with all the cloying, topical, winking humor that makes the red-clad superhero so irresistible infantile. This approach further boxes Gosling into adapting Ryan Reynolds’ obnoxious style and attitude because the role clearly feels, if not written for that other Ryan, then certainly inspired by him. The humor is drawn out well past its welcome because the joke becomes more about how long can Pearce keep pulling the strings on his dead-horse marionette to make it look like it still has a glimmer of life about it than actually focusing on setting up one-two hit punch lines. The most egregious example of this comes in an all-too-long scene featuring Taylor Swift‘s crooning of her song “All Too Well,” but honestly, at every punch line, we feel Pearce and Lietch jabbing our sides to make sure we got the joke as they double over with tears in their eyes from laughing so hard; but hey, at least someone is having fun here! It is honestly surprising that they did not jam in googly eyes or an everything bagel for Stephanie Hsu’s day role as Tom’s personal assistant, Alma Milan, in reference to her work in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022). 

With so much promise about it, the classic summer blockbuster setup, a featuring of practical stunts and fights, and two of today’s biggest stars, that The Fall Guy is an utterly forgettable experience by the time we make it out to the parking lot is indicative of a real failure. These characters have less depth about them than the house frame that falls around Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill Jr (1928) so we have nothing to latch on to. There is an undeniable care that went into the film, so the cast is working off their similar love and devotion to the material and the message that stunt work is an integral part of the filmmaking tradition, but that can only go so far. At the risk of making a three-hour bloated piece that is dragged down by the narrative, Lietch opts to only shoot the action, but in abandoning the story that Pearce has laid out for him, audiences grow continually frustrated that nothing established ever leads anywhere. These loose threads barely hold this collection of vignettes together, and for those who have not realized across the run time that we deserve better as an audience, the clip reel at the end that shows the behind-the-scenes work of the stunts will drive that point home. Leitch buries the best parts of The Fall Guy under the dirt and dust scrambled up behind him as he chases relevancy, either through his humor which is already showing its age so it certainly will not stand the test of time as the classic blockbuster of which he is emulating have, or worse given the purpose of this project, he caves to the modern aesthetic and covers up all the practical work done with so many digital layers in post that The Fall Guy looks like just about anything else on the market today. What a shame.