By Marc S. Sanders
Indulge me please while I spout off a number of movie titles.
I am big fan of Emily Blunt. She justifiably earned her first Oscar nomination for Oppenheimer. She was Mary Poppins – a damn good one. She’s good in her husband John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place monster movies. Have you seen Sicario? The first one? You should! As well, there’s the role that put her on the map with The Devil Wears Prada. Just a great actress with a huge repertoire of sensational performances under her belt.
I am also a big admirer of Ryan Gosling. Magnificent in the long-awaited Blade Runner sequel. He’s a dancing wunderkind and musical genius as well with films like La La Land. You ever seen The Nice Guys where he partnered with Russell Crowe? Another one you should see. Also find him in The Ides Of March, directed by George Clooney. He got his umpteenth nomination for Barbie recently, but let’s face it, after that Oscar show performance for Best Song the man only overshadowed what he blew our eyes out with, and now I believe they should bow to his dancing feet for hosting duties. Plus, the guy is now the pinnacle live action Beavis to go with Mikey Day’s Butthead. Is there nothing this guy can’t do?
I think back to all of these sensational cinematic achievements, and I am dumbfounded that when this pair finally, at long last, team up it is for wasteful bash up/smash up junk like a television adaptation of the Lee Majors’ ABC action series The Fall Guy. It’s been a long time since I was so bored watching a stunt filled two-hour flick with zero spice or flavor. There are fire balls aplomb in this movie and I don’t think Gosling ever feels the burn.
I’ve seen the Die Hards and the Lethal Weapons with the fight scenes and car chases and bombastic explosions. Amid all nine of those pictures (well maybe not the last Die Hard movie) the action usually drove at least some semblance of story, suspense and amazement.
The Fall Guy, directed by former stuntman David Leitch, proudly declares itself a stunt movie because the hero, Colt Seavers (Gosling) is a stunt man for action movies. However, the audience is shortchanged on…well…the stunts. I remember Miguel and I watching The Fast And The Furious for the first time. We both agreed the movie failed because it did not provide what it was selling, namely car chases and car stunts. At least not enough of them. Instead, we got Paul Walker and Vin Diesel getting all Terms Of Endearment like and we asked ourselves, when are they going to get in a car and drive.
Consider the opening sequence of The Fall Guy. First I’m dazzled by a well-done Steadicam shot the runs at least four minutes as it follows Colt talking on his cell phone as he struts from his movie set trailer then on into the lobby of a sky rise building, through a crowd of movie extras, crew and cameras, up an elevator and then over to a platform ledge where a harness is strapped to his uniform and he is suspended high above the ground below, while facing up. A fall is gonna happen, right? And it does, but then we do not see the finish of the fall. This one shot walk for Gosling cuts the legs out from under us. Just as the fall is about to finish, it cuts to the guy in a stretcher being wheeled into an ambulance.
Now you can insist to me that is the start of the story. Colt breaks his back in a stunt fall gone wrong and thus he’s now retired and surely 18 months later, he will be called back to do his best bidding and set the wheels in motion for the rest of the movie. Okay. Fine. I’m with you. The hero comes out of retirement for one last job. Yet, THE RYAN GOSLING just did the actual fall and we couldn’t see THE RYAN GOSLING finish the fall. This wasn’t a stunt double as far as I could tell. I’ve used this analogy before, but this is like Moe throwing the cream pie at Curly, only you don’t get to see the pie make impact with Curly’s face. I feel cheated, and I felt cheated during most of The Fall Guy.
This approach is done often during Leitch’s film. He’ll put Colt into a stunt sequence but then cut away to something else. Later in the movie, Colt gets into a fist fight with some bad dudes while trying to hang on to a runaway truck and trailer careening through the streets of Sydney, Australia. Colt throws punches. He gets punched. He falls. He hangs on. He gets up again. Wash, dry, repeat. The problem is that Leitch opts to cut away after each punch or fall to Emily Blunt doing a rendition of “Against All Odds” in a karaoke bar. This whole action scene is chopped up for no purpose that keeps me in the film. It’s like when I would have to ask my kid to stop interrupting while the grown ups are still talking. I love watching Emily Blunt sing. I love watching Ryan Gosling do his version of what a kamikaze Mel Gibson used to do in his younger years. Can we just have one thing at a time though? This kind of juxtaposition is not intriguing or beguiling or whatever the filmmaker wants it to be, and it does no favors for either lead.
The story is pretty simple and pedestrian. Nor does it follow the theme of the TV show that everyone has forgotten or that this generation has ever heard of. Blunt plays Jody Moreno, a maybe former flame/middle school crush of Colt’s. Unbeknownst to her, the producer (Hannah Waddingham) of the science fiction film Jody is directing has reached out to Colt a year and a half after his broken back accident to come to Australia and not only work on the set but also track down the star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) of the picture who has disappeared without a trace. Colt is not very bright and he’s especially not a detective of any sort.
Once this is all set up, The Fall Guy flip flops from the search, over to Colt getting set on fire repeatedly on the set, and then back to the search, followed by the inevitable twist, which is in no way a twist because the surprise seems known as soon as movie begins.
I was not expecting utter brilliance here, but I was hoping for substance. Gosling and Blunt are two of the biggest stars out there right now and can have their pick of the litter in what they do next. It only makes sense that these two should pair up for a movie, but this is what they choose? The script has less wit or intelligence than a coloring book that has yet to be scribbled in by a four-year-old. I remember the hype around a picture called The Mexican with Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, the biggest stars of the time finally teaming up, and just like it is with The Fall Guy, they had zero chemistry, and they barely shared any scenes together. When they did, they hardly acknowledged each other. Filmmakers cannot just stop working when they get the marquee names to sign a contract for the film. They gotta work to live up to the hype that comes with these capably appealing actors.
In his pursuit, Colt gets drugged and then we see a unicorn standing next to him for a long sequence. The audience sees the unicorn, but Colt hardly acknowledges it. I don’t get where the ha ha ha is supposed to come from this bit. I think the writers were maybe going for an Airplane!/Naked Gun gag. Colt gets thrown through glass walls. He tells us he was part of the Miami Vice stunt show at Universal Studios by simply wearing a jacket that says it, but so what? There’s no dimension to any of this. (I did appreciate hearing the theme song during a very brief nighttime boat chase.)
Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Kick Ass, and one time James Bond candidate) is another fine actor, not doing his best work. He’s a jerk here with bleach blond locks and nothing to do. He’s just unlikable and unfunny. Hannah Waddingham? Never heard of her, but I can only imagine she’s got something better lined than this obnoxious movie producer role with an annoying over the top Australian accent. If she’s really Australian, then I’ll have to surrender to the fact that I just don’t know the down under dialect. Frankly, she’s just terrible.
Never thought I’d say this but Gosling and Blunt had a thousand times more chemistry when they did that presentation at the 2024 Oscars jabbing at the Barbenheimer trend and shamelessly promoting the upcoming release of this film. In this movie, they look like they are not making eye contact with one another or listening to what the other actor is saying. I don’t blame them, though. I call foul on David Leitch for lousy directing.
The most interesting thing about the film adaptation of The Fall Guy are post credit behind the scenes footage where I got to see all of these stunts in their uninterrupted entirety, but without the glossy cinematography finish. However, an Easter egg scene shows up with THE LEE MAJORS and the other blond Heather from the 1980s, THE HEATHER THOMAS. She is given blond wig and probably an unseen muzzle because she has no dialogue to say except stand there in a cop’s uniform with her butt and boobs sticking out. Majors is left to be dull, like he probably was in the final season of the show when it was jumping the shark. If the writers of this movie just used a tenth of their imagination, they could have kept Lee Majors as the original Colt Seaver who mentors Gosling into being THE FALL GUY of today. Why couldn’t Lee Majors have a substantial role in this picture? It would have worked. However, that is not likely because there’s barely a plot, character, or even stunt scene that implies the makers of this movie have that kind of capable imagination.
Find another movie for Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling. STAT! They are so much more worthy then the building they jumped off of only to land in this fire ball blasted junk resting below.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 