- UK release: May 2024
- Director: David Leitch · Writer: Drew Pearce
- Studio / distributor: Universal Pictures; 87North; Entertainment 360
- Genre: Action comedy / stunt-industry romance · Runtime: 126 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Ryan Gosling (Drive, Blade Runner 2049) as Colt Seavers; Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, Sicario) as Jody Moreno; Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass, Tenet) as Tom Ryder; Hannah Waddingham (Game of Thrones) as Gail Meyer
- IMDb: 6.8 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 82% critics / 84% audience · My rating: 8 / 10
David Leitch came up the hard way, as a stuntman and Brad Pitt’s double, before he turned his half of the John Wick partnership into a directing career of his own: Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train. So a film about a working stuntman, adapted loosely from the cheerful 1980s Lee Majors series, is the most personal thing he could have made while still blowing up cars. The Fall Guy is Leitch saying thank you to the trade that raised him, and doing it as a big, glossy, summer crowd-pleaser rather than a po-faced tribute. The wonder is how light he keeps it.
The setup
Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a stuntman at the top of his game until a rig goes wrong and breaks his back, along with his confidence and his romance with up-and-coming camera operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). Eighteen months later he is parking cars when a producer (Hannah Waddingham) lures him back onto a set in Australia, where Jody is now directing her first feature. The job, it turns out, comes with strings: the film’s headline star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), has vanished, and Colt is quietly expected to find him before the production collapses. What begins as a chance to win Jody back becomes a missing-person caper with Colt doing his own stunts off the clock. It is a slim premise, and the film knows it, which is half the fun.
The cast
Gosling is the engine here, and he is having a wonderful time. He has spent years alternating between glacial cool and deadpan absurdity, and Colt lets him pour both into the same character: a bruised romantic who keeps getting set on fire and keeps cracking jokes about it. He sells the action and, more importantly, the ache underneath. Emily Blunt matches him beat for beat, giving Jody real spine rather than playing the love interest as a finish line; their bickering over a megaphone, in front of a full crew, is the warmest thing in the film. Aaron Taylor-Johnson clearly relishes sending up the pampered movie star, all teeth and insecurity, and Hannah Waddingham brings a brisk, smiling ruthlessness to the producer pulling strings behind the scenes. The chemistry between the two leads carries long stretches where the plot is barely holding the rope.
The craft
This is where Leitch’s pedigree shows. The stunts are practical, legible and genuinely thrilling, shot so you can see what is happening to whom, which is rarer than it should be in the digital-soup era. A cannon roll late in the film reportedly set a world record, and Leitch frames it to let you feel the impact rather than smother it in cuts. Jonathan Sela’s photography makes the Sydney coastline glow, Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir’s editing keeps the action clean, and Dominic Lewis’s score, leaning on a needle-drop or two you will recognise, gives the whole thing a buoyant pop-radio swing. Leitch’s affection for the unsung people who take the hits runs through every set piece. He keeps cutting back to the rigs, the pads, the doubles waiting their turn, and the film is at its most sincere when it lingers there.
How it stacks up
It belongs to a small, likeable family of films that are really about how films get made. Tropic Thunder skewered the vanity of the industry; this is the warmer cousin, fond where Stiller’s film was savage. The Gosling-Blunt sparring sits squarely in the Romancing the Stone and The Nice Guys tradition of action comedy that runs on banter as much as on stunts, and Leitch’s own Bullet Train is the obvious stylistic sibling, the same candy-coloured, needle-drop, set-piece energy applied to a story with a bit more heart. Where it falls short of the best of those is the plot, which is functional at most and occasionally just an excuse to move Colt to the next stunt.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics have come in warm, around 82%, with audiences a notch higher at 84%, and the recurring praise is exactly right: the chemistry, the stunt work, the unforced charm. The recurring grumble is that the mystery is thin and the runtime a touch generous, which is also fair. IMDb users have it lower at 6.8, and the box office has underperformed the buzz, the kind of softness that tends to greet an original star vehicle in a sequel-shaped market. None of that troubles my own reaction much. I was not watching for the conspiracy.
Verdict
I value rewatchability, an easy ensemble and craft you can actually see, and The Fall Guy delivers all three. It is too long by fifteen minutes, the mystery is barely there, and a tighter script would have lifted it higher still. But Gosling and Blunt are a joy together, the stunts are the real, painful, exhilarating thing, and the film’s love for the people who do the falling is sincere without being sentimental. It is exactly the sort of film I will happily put on again on a wet Sunday and enjoy just as much the second time. 8⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now, in standard and IMAX, from 2 May.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: an extended cut running around twenty minutes longer arrived on 4K and Blu-ray later in 2024, folding in more of the stunt-set material and an alternate stretch of the mystery. The film has settled as a favourite among action fans and stunt performers in particular, its profile boosted by the wider campaign that year to have stunt work recognised by the Academy. It now streams on Peacock in the United States and is widely available to rent or buy on the usual digital platforms in the UK.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate violence, infrequent strong language, drug references. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Frequent scenes of moderate violence include shootouts, punch ups and fast paced large scale rollercoaster action sequences. There are also images of injury detail in the aftermath of violence.
Threat and horror: There is mild comic threat, including a scenes in which a man and woman are kidnapped at gun point.
Language: The film features infrequent strong language (‘f***k’) and uses of ‘bitch’, ‘dick’, ‘pussy’, ‘twat’, ‘shit’, ‘balls’, ‘arsehole’, ‘piss’, ‘arse’, ‘bullshit’, ‘God’, ‘damn’, Jesus’, ‘Christ’ and ‘hell’. There are also middle finger gestures.
Sex: Mild sex references and innuendo are infrequent and include an undetailed passing reference to role play and a comic reference to a ‘lady of the night’.
Additional issues: Drugs: A man’s drink is spiked with an unnamed drug which causes him to hallucinate. Suicide and self-harm: A villainous character threatens to murder a man and frame it as a suicide. The work contains flashing images which may affect viewers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
