Anatomy Of “The Fall Guy”
THE FALL GUY (DAVID LEITCH) 2024
👍👍👍 and a 1/2
You can toss him, blast him, flip him and turn him…
The Fall Guy is a lot of fun. It’s not unfair to say it would be considerably less fun without Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling given that, surprisingly, it’s the goofy, nerdy charm, heavily seasoned with industry jokes and pop culture references, and not the stunts, that really makes the movie work. You’ll still have a blast - just not necessarily in the way you expected.
It seems odd that a film setting out to celebrate the work of stunt teams in the film industry is short on truly standout work in this department, at least to the untrained eye. Yet the movie actually contains a world record, topping the number of car rolls previously pulled off by the team behind Casino Royale. But are eight and a half rolls really that different from seven? If no-one had told us, would we even recognise the fact? This, more than anything, sums up the issue here - the lack of recognition of stunt performers. I was surprised to find that the Screen Actors Guild has been recognising stunt ensembles in motion pictures since 2007, but until this is more heavily publicised and the likes of the Academy and Golden Globes follow suit, the issue will remain. With greater and greater use of VFX and CGI, making on-screen action seem ever-more dramatic, what goes into even the simplest of stunts is mostly underappreciated.
In setting out to redress the balance, The Fall Guy has committed to pulling off physical stunts without computer enhancement as far as possible. This brings the added benefit of avoiding the awkward, unrealistic CGI that plagued David Leitch’s stunt-heavy Hobbs and Shaw Fast and Furious franchise spin-off. But the movie never really shows you just how much preparation is required for even the simplest of these. In fact, for the cannon-roll scene, a jet-lagged Gosling, eighteen months removed from his last stunt, with a bad back, is simply strapped into the car and told to get on with it. You’d like to think that the coordinator had everything planned out in advance but it doesn’t necessarily feel “strictly profesh”. Likewise, there’s a notable lack of preparation for the rearranged stunt that sets up the Blunt/Gosling backstory in the movie’s first 5 minutes. Maybe the point is that stunt performers make it look easy. It’s not like Leitch, a veteran stunt performer with well over 50 movies to his credit, doesn’t know the score but, for me, his look behind the curtain offers less insight than I would have expected.
It might also be a quantity over quality issue. There’s a history, particularly in the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises, of movies having that one stunt to make your jaw hit the floor. Think of the dam bungee to open Goldeneye or, more recently, the clifftop motorcycle BASE jump in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. Go back even further and you have the groundbreaking corkscrew car jump from The Man With The Golden Gun, way back in 1974. Cannon-roll aside, which the movie could have done a much better job of selling to both the in-theatre audience (multiple camera angles, slow-mo, you get the idea) and in advance promotion/publicity, there’s not anything that makes you think “Wow!” In fact, the cardinal sin of this element of the movie is the failure to truly build to something for the finale which, despite multiple moving parts, is good, rather than great.
…shoot him, hang him, bury and burn him…
It’s not even as though this is the first movie to focus on the role of the stunt performer, though it’s been a while and it’s easy to forget. That movie was 1978’s Hooper, directed by Hal Needham and starring Burt Reynolds as the titular stuntman, which I watched endlessly as a kid. While there are stunts throughout that movie, everything builds to that one impossible stunt, an epic 325 ft rocket car jump that set a world record of its own at the time, the jump being preceded by a mindblowing sequence of crashes and explosions as a car chase ensues through a city during an earthquake. That’s a heck of a set-up. There are no half-measures and it looks like the place is being carpet bombed by B-52s while vehicles crash and skid, things combust, and giant falling chimney stacks narrowly miss the hood of the car.
What’s equally important here is the focus on the preparation and planning for that final scene, illustrating just how much goes into a set-up, along with an emphasis on the physical toll taken on a stunt performer’s body while they often risk life or permanent injury. While safety measures have improved since then, decreasing those risks, Leitch himself will be well aware of the dangers, not least due to the death of stunt performer Sequana Joi Harris, who died in a motorcycle accident during filming of Deadpool 2 which he helmed as recently as 2018.
The smartest thing Leitch does is include the raw footage from each of the stunts alongside the closing credits, and the smartest thing you can do is stick around to watch them to truly appreciate everything that went into this element of the movie. There’s also a credits sequence epilogue that is fun and entertaining for people who remember the show the movie is (very loosely) based on. It’s just a shame that we have to wait 2 hours to get something like this.
Run him out, across the ground, take a truck, run him down…
In lots of ways, Gosling (Ryan) is similar to Reynolds (Burt), sharing the same likeable appeal, though Gosling’s comedy is far more self-deprecating and less macho. Here, that comic ability that served him so well in The Nice Guys and Barbie really shines, but it’s shot through with lots of heart, particularly important given that this is kind of a rom-com with stunts and explosions. The relationship of Gosling as stuntman Colt Seavers and Emily Blunt as director Jody Moreno is key to the whole thing. The movie asks “just how far would you go for love?” and the answer seems to be flying halfway round the world, getting set on fire several times, having a fight in a moving skip and crying to Taylor Swift, while trying to find a missing person and being shot at. But there’s just a wonderful wholesomeness to their chemistry here as the pair rekindle old feelings on the set of Moreno’s debut movie ‘Metalstorm’, an intergalactic cross-species love affair (with stunts and explosions).
If we’re being honest, Metalstorm looks bad and not the sort of movie you want to launch a career with, even if Leitch and cinematographer Jonathan Sela frequently make the filming of it look great. But the meta film-within-a-film device is there to service the romcom and stunt pairing so we shouldn’t read too much into it. Nor should we think too much about the plot to track down missing lead actor Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a pampered narcissist who hates anyone else taking centre stage. While this part has the strongest connection with the TV show, where the original Colt Seavers (Lee Majors) moonlights as a bounty hunter and drives a pickup, it’s merely another setup that allows Gosling’s goofy charm to take the spotlight, and for Leitch and screenwriter Drew Pearce to throw a number of clever in-jokes and sight-gags at the audience. And a unicorn.
…There ain’t nothin’ like the life of a Hollywood stuntman
There is actually some really neat stuff here, in particular a fight sequence with added shine and sparkle following the spiking of Gosling’s drink in a club. There’s also a nice split screen sequence of a telephone conversation between Blunt and Gosling made even more amusing by a giant alien hand and misremembered Julia Roberts movies. There are some real laugh-out-loud-funny bits as well as a boatload of subtly amusing stuff. You may not get every reference, particularly if you’re under 30, but there’s plenty there for everyone. This includes the soundtrack, with its knowing references, some great needle-drops, and at least one sound effect to make a certain demographic grin. If you know, you know.
There have been persistent rumours of Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing the new James Bond. This isn’t the movie to convince the producers he’s the right man for the job (unlike Daniel Craig’s star-turn in Layer Cake). Though there is clearly an element of him needing to be unlikeable and arrogant off-set as a contrast to his on-screen persona, the fact is, neither is particularly engaging. It’s hard to decide if he’s trying to convince us that his character really is a top actor, or whether he’s pitching his performance as conveying someone who’s successful despite a lack of talent. Perhaps the message is that it’s the stunts and the professionals around him that are directly responsible for his success.
Hannah Waddingham isn’t in the running to play the next James Bond, though I’d definitely watch that movie. Her star has been ascending for a while now since Ted Lasso put her on the map, and it’s great to see her get a prominent role in a blockbuster, here playing producer Gail Meyer who will seemingly do whatever it takes for her star and her movie. Her dark hair and glasses threw me off initially (though not to the same extent as her look in Game Of Thrones) but she’s clearly having a blast and the character benefits from the exaggerated theatricality she can bring. Elsewhere, Winston Duke, as stunt coordinator Dan Tucker, makes the most of his role, particularly the buddy-movie elements with Gosling.
Ultimately though, it’s Blunt and Gosling at the heart of the movie that keep us invested. We want them to get together and we feel every plot twist that keeps them apart even when we’re laughing. We want them to have their spicy margaritas and make bad decisions together in the future, while wearing swimming costumes or not.
Isn’t that all any of us want for ourselves?
Lyrics from “Nothin’ Like the Life (Of A Hollywood Stuntman)” performed by Bent Myggen from the Hooper OST
