Directed by David Leitch
Year: 2024
Language: English
Shaun’s Score: 1.8/5 ★
Before Watching:
How much guy could a fall guy fall if a fall guy could fall guy? Evidently, just kenough to fill an IMAX theater. Look, I also saw the awkward chemistry that Emily Blunt1 and Ryan Gosling had while presenting at the 2024 Oscars and trading (gratingly scripted) jabs,2 but they did manage to (somehow) not seem like coworkers who hate each other in Leitch’s latest flick. Gosling has shed his pink exoskeleton and roller skates, Blunt has ditched her the-lady-doth-protest-too-much eyeliner-bleeding melodrama tears, and they’ve met somewhere in the middle to find a dry earth tone color palette. Just be glad that we’re seeing a single movie without Timotheé Chalamet or Zendaya in it this year.
We get it, Hollywood loves stunts3—David Leitch himself was a stuntman for the likes of Pitt4 and Damon before striking it big with John Wick. His new film The Fall Guy (if accomplishing nothing else) makes sure you know that it’s an homage to the stunting arts, as we follow seasoned stuntman Colt Seavers (Gosling) on a quest to pull the leading actor of his latest project (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, another Bullet Train alum) out of a funk while also trying to woo director Jody Moreno (Blunt). The film has everything popcorn-munching crowds at AMC are awaiting like bloodthirsty Colosseum spectators: lots of Gosling abs-shots, quippy dialogue, sappy romance, grotesque levels of action and explosion, and an unexpected Taylor Swift cameo. The Tortured (re: sleep-deprived) Poets (re: scriptwriters) Department is in full gear, making yet another movie about how oh my GOD aren’t movies just the coolest thing?
The Fall Guy is also, more interestingly,5 a commentary on the rising influence of AI in filmmaking. A key plot point revolves around deepfake tech’s ability to paste an actor’s face on a stuntman’s body—perhaps the most, um… topical remark in the film. Unfortunately, the remainder of the movie feels like it was written by AI, and not in the fun Ex Machina way. Leitch drenches the film in stunts porn, underutilizes Blunt,6 and rests too self-assuredly within the trope of “movies about Hollywood are great because c’mon, who doesn’t love Hollywood?” Again, I’m not anti-fun, and I actually think this is a refreshing break for audiences who might be emotionally fatigued by the weight of recent blockbusters like Dune 2, Oppenheimer, or Killers of the Flower Moon. Or, at least a break for fatigued bladders after sitting through those runtimes.
Perhaps if Anatomy of a Fall featured more Anatomy of a Fall Guy (i.e. Ryan Gosling’s always-welcome thirst traps),7 I would have understood why it won the Palme d’Or. Leitch’s release, on the other hand, is too cliché to be interesting to anybody without iPad baby brain. Every scene is drenched in winking improv bits, lacking any satirical bite—am I supposed to hate the film industry, or love it? I always hope that fun, easy, A-List cinema can develop to be less cookie-cutter, but it seems like that growth has yet again been stunted.
The Fall Guy premiered at SXSW 2024, and is now available in theaters worldwide.
After Watching:
I just love that the villain is Universal Pictures.8 They’ve had a few good years, so they can take a little friendly fire while they finish counting the Oppenheimer awards.
I’ll also give credit to the humor behind the film’s central conceit—Tom Ryder wants Colt to take the fall for his crimes, and Colt’s toolbox for getting back at him is just being able to actually do stunts. Where Leitch seems to always struggle is in not choking that humor with other hackneyed bits—Bullet Train had a few too many Thomas the Train jokes, and The Fall Guy has all of that incessant chopping of romcom tropes with obsequious cine-gasm signaling. Did we really need a split-screen dialogue while Colt is still trespassing in a hotel room? Did we need all of those Dan and Colt quiz each other on famous movie lines interjections? Also, can we address the elephant in the room that this role was clearly written for a different Ryan…
Finally, I wish the pushback to AI wasn’t so short-changed in the script. Action films of the past decade are progressively less Springsteen and more Skrillex,9 and those in the industry most affected by this change have been hung out to dry. Mission Impossible recently tackled this trend head-on, and succeeded; even Top Gun: Maverick used some creative cinematography to bite back, while also nodding to the parallels within the obsolescence of “classic” non-drone warfare. RIP Ken, you would have loved these macho movies (and you probably would’ve hated every other Ryan Gosling movie).
(to the Oppenheimer bigger bomb meme format): Until someone builds a Blunter Emily…
Well, not enough to give the stunt men of this film top billing, but that’s neither here nor there…
Whom he later directed in Bullet Train.
Low bar.
And also—while we’re at it—Stephanie Hsu.
Sorry Emily, here the Devil Wears Nada.
Yes, I know it was just a rogue producer, but I like to think that the studio’s greed is the impetus for all of her shenanigans.
I mean “made on the computer,” but I could also just as aptly mean “freaky.”