Asher Luberto
He’s more than just Ken. Following his Oscar-nominated role as Barbie’s boyfriend, Ryan Gosling keeps the same blond streaks and the same dumb-blond charisma but is asked to be a little more serious in The Fall Guy, giving him a chance to display a range of comedy to drama reminiscent of Cary Grant. Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stuntman, which means he’s got more to worry about than just Beach (though, like the character played by Brad Pitt was described in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he’s “pretty for a stunt guy”). Colt has got a career of back-breaking feats to deal with, doubling for one of the biggest actors in cinema and dating Jody (Emily Blunt), one of the sexiest cinematographers in the business. That is, until it all goes awry.
It’s an injury that scars deeper than just muscle. Colt breaks his back on set, causing him to leave the industry, his girlfriend, and his tremendous ego behind for a life of parking cars at a burrito shop. After 18 months, he gets a call from a friend in show business telling him he’s been hired to work on Jody’s directorial debut, a science-fiction blockbuster set in Sydney, where he learns an alarming secret: Jody doesn’t actually want him on the set, but she needs him there to track down her main actor, who’s gone missing with a trail of breadcrumbs in his wake.
In what is basically an ode to stuntmen, Colt pulls off hilariously operatic moves as he finds the actor, grumbles the lines, and gets the girl. David Leitch spent a decade as a stunt double for Pitt before becoming a director, and his appreciation for the work of stuntmen shines through in every scene, as Colt scours Sydney for his target, going undercover in a nightclub where he trips out on acid, sees unicorns, punches villains, winds up in a car chase, and eventually takes on a ring of hitmen. Why? Because he’s a stuntman. And what do stuntmen do besides take punches for other people?
That reverence for stuntmen makes the messy plot a tad more tolerable. There’s no real substance — nothing on the director’s mind but violence, viscera, and veins — but Leitch sure knows how to conduct spectacle. The fight scenes are a choreographed dance; they aren’t muddled by CGI but unfold in seamless takes that let you know real actors are performing these feats — or at least, their stuntmen are. There are no edits that cut around a star’s inability to fight, which is a Leitch specialty, and there are plenty of quips about how stuntmen are sidelined by the film industry.
The Fall Guy can be a bit too meta for its own good, but it’s very much in line with the previous crowd-pleasers Leitch has delivered, from Atomic Blonde to Deadpool 2. The highlights of these films are the stunts, like a two-minute take of Charlize Theron snapping necks in a musty stairwell or a closeup of Ryan Reynolds smashing a dude’s face through a window. Gosling pulls off similarly high-octane stunts while bringing his own brand of aloofness to the role. He’s more than just Colt or Ken. He’s Kenough to make this action movie sing.
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