The Fall Guy review – good stunts, appalling script

David Leitch got his Hol­ly­wood start work­ing in stunts – notably dou­bling for Brad Pitt in Fight Club and lat­er coor­di­nat­ing on films includ­ing X‑Men Ori­gins: Wolver­ine and Tron: Lega­cy. There’s no doubt that Leitch is excep­tion­al­ly good at this, and stunt work is some­thing he’s always been extreme­ly keen to cham­pi­on since his ascent as a film­mak­er began when he co-direct­ed John Wick. Leitch has been one of the most vocal advo­cates for a stunt cat­e­go­ry at the Acad­e­my Awards, and across his fil­mog­ra­phy the action scenes are reli­ably the best part of any­thing he makes.

It was only a mat­ter of time before Leitch man­aged to make an entire film cen­tred around his love of stunt­work, and it comes in the form of a loose adap­ta­tion of a 1980s tele­vi­sion series about a trio of per­form­ers moon­light­ing as boun­ty hunters. In its glossy do-over, The Fall Guy cen­tres on top stunt­man Colt Seavers, played by the ever-win­some Ryan Gosling, who opens the film by extolling the impor­tance of his role in a Dead­poo­lesque audi­ence address (Leitch direct­ed Dead­pool 2), and detail­ing his blos­som­ing romance with promis­ing young cam­era oper­a­tor Jody Moreno (Emi­ly Blunt). As the dou­ble for self-involved star Tom Ryder (Aaron Tay­lor-John­son, more Zoolan­der than High­lander), Seaver is the best of the best with a charis­ma to match, which some­what irri­tates the ego­ma­ni­ac actor he’s work­ing for. Yet an on-set acci­dent soon knocks Seavers out of com­mis­sion and inad­ver­tent­ly leads to his with­draw­al from Hol­ly­wood completely.

Some­time lat­er, while work­ing as a surly valet, he’s con­vinced to take a gig on an upcom­ing sci-fi epic by blath­er­ing pro­duc­er Gail Mey­er (an extreme­ly grat­ing Han­nah Wadding­ham), who assures Seavers it’s the per­fect way to get back in his ex’s good graces, who has land­ed her first big direct­ing gig. When he rocks up on set Seavers quick­ly becomes in a seedy mur­der plot that forces him to utilise both his brains and brawn to catch a killer and make sure his girlfriend’s film shoot goes off with­out a hitch.

A fair­ly rote action-com­e­dy unfolds, with Seaver beat­ing off var­i­ous goons with help from his best friend/​stunt coor­di­na­tor Dan Tuck­er (Win­ston Duke, under­utilised but charm­ing as usu­al) as he tries to clear his name and make call time. Between Dri­ve and The Place Beyond the Pines, and more recent­ly The Grey Man, Gosling has packed in a lot of hours falling on crash mats, and he’s a charis­mat­ic enough force to make up for Drew Pearce’s ham­my dia­logue. His chem­istry with Blunt is lack­lus­tre, though, to Blunt’s cred­it, she has lit­tle room to manœu­vre with a role that amounts to ​‘flus­tered Eng­lish woman’.

Wadding­ham and Tay­lor-John­son are hard­ly a tan­ta­lis­ing set of foils, but there’s plen­ty of flashy stunt­work to keep audi­ences’ eyes from glaz­ing over – unfor­tu­nate­ly it can’t quite detract from the cheesy one-lin­ers, which veer into out­right poor taste with a quip from Waddingham’s char­ac­ter about the John­ny Depp and Amber Heard assault case. It’s unclear why the team felt this was a nec­es­sary line to keep in – mak­ing light of a recent domes­tic vio­lence court case is a weird flex for a main­stream Hol­ly­wood comedy.

It’s a shame that the script can’t keep pace with the stunt­work, which is often impres­sive, and cer­tain­ly, there’s a long his­to­ry of the hard work that goes into coor­di­nat­ing and pulling off tricky action shots (and indeed shoot­ing them). But while The Fall Guy is an affec­tion­ate and occa­sion­al­ly enter­tain­ing trib­ute to the peo­ple pro­fes­sion­al­ly flip­ping cars and tak­ing punch­es, it neglects the oth­er cru­cial aspects of what makes a film enjoy­able, result­ing in a pop­corn flick that quick­ly fades from the mem­o­ry once the cred­its roll, sad­ly lack­ing the stay­ing pow­er of any of the action greats it references.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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