The Fall Guy (2024) – Review

“THE FALL GUY”

This movie is based off a TV series that ran from 1981 to 1986 that was about a movie stuntman who moonlighted as a bounty hunter when work dried up. This new adaptation comes to us from David Leitch, a producer on films like Hobbs & Shaw, and he also directed the recent Bullet Train. I liked both of those movies on some level, and The Fall Guy is an interesting film. I suspect fans of the TV series won’t be too happy that for the most part this film just took the very base premise of the fact that the guy is a stuntman.

Colt Seavers (played by Ryan Gosling) disappears on his aspiring director girlfriend, Jodie (Emily Blunt), and is then called back to a set in Australia to aid in her latest film production and attempts to get the main character of that movie (played by Aaron Taylor Johnson) to finish filming. I think that the trailer actually undersold how insane this movie is.

First and foremost, The Fall Guy is a love letter to stuntmen. Virtually the entire film is dedicated to showing the behind the scenes work and what goes into a good stunt shoot, but also the serious risks that the stuntmen take in the process. It really makes you wonder why there isn’t a Best Stunt Performance category at The Oscars.

Despite the fact that this is an insane role, Ryan Gosling is completely selling it.

If anything, though, I kind of think that the film has a few issues. It’s a very predictable story. There are a few plot twists that I guessed ahead of time, but I’ve stated on several occasions that knowing a twist ahead of time doesn’t make it bad, in fact, some of the worst plot twists are so bad because they come out of nowhere.

That being said, I would say another weakness of the film is that the characters aren’t exactly three dimensional. Though, they don’t need to be. This film is good popcorn entertainment. As much as I love a good think piece, I will always appreciate a movie where you can switch off your brain, and I would say that The Fall Guy falls into that category well.

The action scenes are well shot and well-choreographed, as you’d expect, and I was surprised at how they made me feel the weight behind certain dangerous sequences, backed up by how much the film tells you about the safety precautions behind such scenes.

I did think the film was pushing its luck a bit with the two-hour run time; I think ten or fifteen minutes could have been shaved off.

I wouldn’t say that The Fall Guy was an extraordinary movie, but I would say it is a well-made movie and I had a lot of fun watching it. The action scenes are well shot, the acting is very hammy but good, and overall, it’s well worth your time. Fans of the TV show might be disappointed with how many liberties this movie takes, but I don’t think it’s to the detriment of the final product. It’s worth a watch, and I would actually say it’s worth seeing this one in the cinema, because large portions of the film look great!