SXSW review: The Fall Guy

Fresh off of his show-stopping performance of “I’m Just Ken” at the Oscars, Ryan Gosling headed to South By Southwest to support his next project, The Fall Guy, where he introduced the film before its world premiere. He noted that he and the filmmaking team, including director David Leitch and co-star Emily Blunt, spent much of their time during production thinking about us. At every turn, they wondered how the audience would feel about a given plot element, a given twist, or a given setpiece, because they wanted to make a movie that would keep us guessing and, most importantly, please us.

And above all else, The Fall Guy is indeed a crowd-pleaser. Adapted by Drew Pearce (Hotel Artemis) from the TV series of the same name created by Glen A. Larson, Leitch’s film is a big, slick excuse to put actors who are all bona fide charm bombs together in the same frame. He surrounds them with explosions and car chases, having a good time while the music of KISS and The Darkness bumps in the background. In those simple terms, the film succeeds mightily, but with that success comes a price. For all its efforts to please its audience, The Fall Guy also ends up feeling like a film that’s trying just a little too hard to be all things to all people, leaving it second-guessing some of its own best instincts and falling short of some of the action-comedy glory that was very nearly in its grasp.

The “fall guy” of the title is Colt Seavers, a veteran stuntman who’s got a job he likes and a girlfriend, camera operator Jody (Emily Blunt), he likes even more. Everything seems to be going Colt’s way until the actor he doubles for, the egomaniacal Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), demands he perform a massive falling stunt one more time. Things go wrong, and just like that, Colt is out of the stunts game with a back injury and an even more painful wound to his pride.

Cut to 18 months later. Jody’s achieved her dream of being a first-time director on a big action blockbuster, and a call from the film’s producer (Hannah Waddingham, loving every minute) convinces him to come back and work for his former flame. There’s just one problem: Tom Ryder’s gone missing, his team doesn’t know where he is, and if he’s gone for much longer he could wreck Jody’s chance at directorial glory. Hoping to redeem himself for ghosting his ex, Colt ends up begrudgingly working to get to the bottom of the mystery, running into countless action-packed mishaps along the way.

What we have here, in Pearce’s script and Leitch’s execution of that script, is a hybrid film that attempts to be an adventure comedy, a detective story, and a rom-com all at once. In the end, despite a runtime of two full hours, The Fall Guy simply cannot shoulder that weight efficiently for its entirety. It’s not that any one piece of this hybrid fails. It’s that the film has to pivot so frequently, and weigh its options in terms of which story gets priority at so many different junctures, that the film ends up a jumble of plot-heavy dialogue and characters explaining things to each other just long enough to clear space for the next action scene. It’s a bit of a mess, but thanks to the other elements involved in making this film, it’s a very entertaining one.

That begins, of course, with the action. Leitch famously began his career working in stunts, and translated that to a career as one of the most respected action visionaries in the business. Needless to say, he brings all his powers to bear on this film, giving us everything from an ode to Miami Vice to an unexpected garbage-truck fight scene to, yes, plenty of onscreen odes to the stunt teams doing the work on film sets around the world. There’s palpable joy in these moments, particularly when Leitch gets into the nitty gritty of what it takes to make stunts work, not just because he loves it, but because he knows that we’ll love it too if we just take a moment to reflect on the kind of coordination, effort, and pure toughness it takes to do the job.

But even with the action and stunt work operating at full throttle, what really makes The Fall Guy work is the partnership between Gosling and Blunt. He gets to once again play the beaten-down hero on a quest for redemption, as he did so well in films like The Nice Guys, while she gets to play the ambitious woman who’s balancing her career with the desires of her heart. They’re terrific together, but the film also gives them both space to shine separately, with the help of a great supporting cast led by a scene-stealing Waddingham.

The Fall Guy is not going to go down as an instant classic in the action movie world. It’s just a bit too wrapped up in its own cleverness and plot density for that. What it will do, though, is deliver a blast of fun at the movies worthy of the biggest tub of popcorn you can find. It’s two hours of movie stars being absolute charm machines, and sometimes that’s all you really need.