The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy is the fun time that was promised by the original marketing. It was clearly made by people who love movies. From the beginning credits to the end of the movie it's very evident that everyone involved in this film really knew what the best parts of action and romance movies are. It was more than I expected it to be and it knew exactly what it was.

First of all this is the role that Ryan Gosling was born to play, he is really leaning into these goofy ass roles in his later career and it suits him very well. He and Emily Blunt have insanely great chemistry and they just play off of each other so well.

Very few movies are able to blend genres well. This was obviously marketed as an action movie with a touch of romance. Already two genres that don’t ever actually work together very well, but The Fall Guy really manages to balance the action and the romance so well. Then we add a good bit of mystery and crime and honestly it plays out all of these genres so well.

One of the best scenes in the movie is Ryan Gosling crying in his car to Taylor Swift’s All Too Well while having flashbacks about him and Emily Blunt’s character. Absolutely amazing work. They definitely paid so much money for that song and it was 100% Ryan Gosling’s choice.

Now it is a movie about a stunt guy so obviously there is a lot of stunt work both in the context of the in-universe film being shot and in the rest of the film. I do believe that Ryan Gosling does some of his own stunts in this film, they were really deliberate with their shots so you could actually tell that it was him. That said he did have an incredible team of stunt men behind him for all the things he couldn’t do. Just for the record, most high profile actors aren’t allowed to do their own stunt for insurance purposes. Also this is a film about the stunt people on films, really it's a love letter to the things that they do so in the press tour of the film the actors did a great job of praising and publicizing who did all the heavy lifting on the film. Anyway, Logan Holladay was his stunt driver, Ben Jenkin got hit by the car and lit on fire, and Troy Brown did the multi story falls.

The film was truly very well written. The dialogue and actual story beats were incredible and every single shot and action scene was just executed so well. They were also super self aware of the running joke in the movie where they have Hall H at SDCC being like the holy grail and I think that's hilarious. And then there is another joke about stunts and stunt actors not having an Oscar category, which was great because they absolutely should have their own award.

This film was a movie about movies and it might sound pretty pretentious but those are always the best films. Because they are made with so much love and care by people who are passionate about the artform. And they always have the best technique and film devices to tell the story because the plot and characters are delivered with so much knowledge and experience. Seriously I love films about film and The Fall Guy is probably the most fun of these kinds of movies because most of the time they are very heavy and emotional but this was really just a fun ride. Overall I give the movie a solid 9/10 it's very easy to like and we had a great time watching it. I highly recommend.