Ryan Gosling has been a romantic lead to me since I was a child. My friends and I would watch all the reruns of Breaker High on YTV after school, and Sean and Tamira were THE couple. So, his trajectory into a Hollywood Leading Man did not come as a surprise. When you are a star your name being attached to a project is one of the needles that help push a project from development into production, so I’m glad Ryan Gosling chose to use his star power to get behind a film like The Fall Guy (he was also attached as a producer on it along with the film’s director David Leitch and writer Drew Pearce before it got picked up by Universal), because stunts and the people that perform them are still sorely overlooked (there has never been an Oscar for stunts; the Emmy’s have had an award for Outstanding Stunt Coordination since 2002, but only added Outstanding Stunt Performance in 2021). This film is a love letter to stunts and stunt performers and will be something I can see being used as a rallying cry for getting them the recognition they have long deserved, AKA an Oscar. Chris O’Hara, landed the first-ever stunt designer credit designation for his work on the film.
The Fall Guy is loosely based on the 1980s TV series of the same name, but it is more a love letter to all classic action adrenaline movies. As I was watching it, I remembered my childhood awe at seeing the stunts in True Lies. But it is also a love letter to cinema itself, which is made abundantly clear from the opening credits when they form out of “script pages.” The film is not afraid to make inside baseball jokes about the industry (like referring to the film within the film as a Hall H film), but it does a great job of balancing those jokes with ones that don’t rely on being in the industry or reading trades.
The action sequences are thrilling a delightful, whether the ones from the film within the film, or the ones that take place off-set in the world of the film, there was clearly a lot of love and passion that went into choreographing and planning them. And it showed in both the final product and the reel with the actual stunt performers they showed doing the stunts over the credits. A credit sequence the audience sat through, not wanting to miss a moment of these normally unsung stars, as Blake Shelton croons his cover of the TV show’s original theme “Unknown Stuntman.”
But the film isn’t just heart-pumping adrenaline action sequences. It is a lot of humour and heart, that are nicely woven together with the action. Colt Seavers (Gosling) is a stuntman, but beneath that thumbs-up persona, he’s a marshmallow who is traumatized by an on-set injury and believes he missed his chance with Jody (Emily Blunt). The main action of the film begins with his return to stunts after a long hiatus when he believes she asked for him for her directorial debut. Their unresolved feelings set sparks as they film. Only if you watched the trailer, you know the real reason Colt is brought on the film is that Tom Ryder (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the actor he does stunts for, is missing, and Colt is tasked to find him by the film’s producer Gail (played by Hannah Waddingham). So, despite any misgivings he might have, this is what he sets out to do, because from the very first scene, we knew he wanted to support Jody and her dream of directing, and if her lead doesn’t come back to set and production gets shut down, she will probably never get another chance to direct again, forget about Hall H. It is his marshmallow side that drives him into most of the crazy action scenes that follow. That is why the film is so much fun; because it leads with heart.
The Fall Guy opens in theatres on May 3rd.
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