(M) 125 minutes
I was ready to likeThe Fall Guy. It sounded like a fun proposition. An updating of the old Lee Majors TV show,the movie stars Ryan Gosling as the veteran Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers,who comes out of retirement to work on a big-budget sci-fi epic calledMetalstorm.
Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers and Emily Blunt is Jody Moreno in The Fall Guy.Supplied
This schlocky film-within-a-film is being made by first-time director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). Jody and Colt have a romantic history. Colt wants to reignite their relationship. Jody doesn’t.
The star of Jody’s movie is the obnoxious Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). When Tom suddenly goes missing during the shoot,Colt gets the job of finding him. If he can locate Tom and saveMetalstorm,Colt and Jody just might find themselves back on smooching terms by the time the credits roll.
The Fall Guy was shot in Sydney,so we can watch the action unfold in a series of familiar locales. There’s a,an all-in brawl in front of the Opera House,vehicular mayhem on the streets of Milsons Point. What’s not to like?
The screenplay,for starters. Written by Drew Pearce,who previously co-wroteIron Man 3,The Fall Guy aspires to be a hip,knowing satire on modern Hollywood. It wants to beKiss Kiss Bang Bang orGet Shorty,with more and better stunts.
But Pearce’s script is thin on wit. Worse,it’s lacking in basic craft. Simple as the film’s story is,the script makes a laborious meal out of telling it. Some of the early exposition scenes are so disjointed,I started wondering if the projectionist had mixed up the reels.
The Fall Guy’s director,David Leitch,is a former stuntman. Leitch knows how to stage a good stunt. But his ability to shape a two-hour narrative is less sure. He has a weird sense of pace. He skips over important plot points in two seconds but lets scenes of purported comedy drag on at tiresome length.
He also struggles to control the movie’s tone. Ideally,a film like this should hero the action and deploy the laughs judiciously,as a kind of seasoning.The Fall Guy tries to hero the comedy. Its approach is insistently slapsticky and broad,as if big laughs,like a big stunt,can be achieved through simple physical application.
Maybe the studio figured if you’ve got Ryan Gosling,you don’t need a first-rate writer or director. After all, movie stars of our time. He can take a half-decent line and make it sound like gold.
For the opening 10 minutes or so,Gosling’s charm is sufficient to carryThe Fall Guy. You’re reminded of how good he was inThe Nice Guys. Then you find yourself recalling thatThe Nice Guys was written and directed by the genuinely witty Shane Black. In a Black film,the good lines keep coming. InThe Fall Guy,they don’t.
Nor does Emily Blunt’s Jody bring much to the alleged party. Blunt’s role is overwritten and underwritten. She’s given plenty of lines,but few of them transmit any clear sense of who her character is meant to be. She gets plenty of scenes with Gosling,as if some kind of chemistry will inevitably arise as a result.
It never does. Blunt and Gosling are a dud pairing. The only sparks that fly come from smashed-up automobile parts scraping against roads.
A critic quoted on the poster says this is “a ridiculously fun movie”. I heartily endorse the suggestion thatThe Fall Guy is ridiculous. But fun? Not from where I was sitting.
The Fall Guy is released in cinemas on April 24.
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