THE FALL GUY Review

Not to put anyone off The Fall Guy, but it does feature massive spoilers for a thirty-three-year-old movie titled Thelma & Louise. Warning aside, it is The Fall Guy’s appreciation, admiration, and recognition of such films as that Ridley Scott crime romp along with countless others like First Blood, the Fast franchise, and any number of Julia Roberts romantic comedies that make stuntman turned filmmaker David Leitch's latest so endearing to avid movie fans like myself. The flipside of that coin is that The Fall Guy is also very much one of those types of movies, whether it be an over the top action adventure flick or a bombastic rom com, for modern audiences now breaking free of the serialized blockbusters we’ve become accustomed to over the last generation and who are now being ingratiated into true summer blockbuster territory. It may spoil Thelma & Louise but what it really wants is for you to either seek these movies out or re-visit them in hopes of discovering or renewing a sense of inspiration. As Ryan Gosling's Colt Seavers would say, The Fall Guy is very much a “thumbs up” version of this kind of moviemaking; a fun, ostentatious (in the best way), and wholly entertaining palette cleanser. 

What makes The Fall Guy even more of a return to those summer blockbusters of yesteryear beyond the somewhat novel concept (it’s partially based on the 80s TV show starring Lee Majors and Heather Thomas who both make cameos in a mid-credit scene here) is the fact the film is being sold as much if not more on its stars than its premise. Riding high off the pink nuclear fumes of last summer’s “Barbenheimer” Universal paired Oppenheimer’s Emily Blunt with Ken himself and in many ways, this feels like a culmination of this current phase for both of these actors' careers. Gosling is THE marquee star of the moment yet upends that persona by playing a “forgettable” stunt man (brilliant!) whereas Blunt is not only game to be the love interest, but is very intentional about positioning her Jody Moreno as a woman at the helm of this massive production who not only has a vision and a voice, but is able to steer the ship in a successful fashion all while working with Colt to better understand their relationship status. That relationship status is the heart of the film as Colt seeks to atone for past mistakes but the action he's chasing outside his professional life doesn't supplant the film's main objective: blowing things up and beating the shit out of people.