The Fall Guy, starring Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, is a gloriously fun, screwball action film that pokes fun at action films and this, I now know, is my favourite kind of action film. I would even venture that it’s the sort of film that’s crying out to be enjoyed with a big old bucket of popcorn. Go wild with the stuff. I promise I won’t hiss or look daggers at you. This is a popcorn movie. It has that spirit – in spades.
Does anyone crash backwards through a plate glass window? Of course they do!
As a comedy set in the stunt world, it’s one of those Hollywood films that affectionately sends up Hollywood, like Tropic Thunder or Bowfinger. It is written by Drew Pearce and directed by David Leitch, who has form in the action genre (John Wick, Deadpool 2, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw) and was once the stunt double for Brad Pitt. You can see why his CV stood out. The starting point here is the 1980s American TV series The Fall Guy, which starred Lee Majors as stunt man Colt Seavers, although if you’re after Majors’s best work then that would have to be The Six Million Dollar Man, surely. (Perhaps that’s an argument for another day.)
Gosling plays the Colt character but is not given an original song (‘I’m Just Colt’?) to sing on this occasion. He’s the stunt double for famous action star Tom ‘I do all my own stunts’ Ryder (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who was tipped to be the next Bond for about four minutes). This Tom may or may not be based on the Tom that is Tom Cruise who is currently filming Mission: Impossible 786, or whatever number they are up to now.
All is good in Seavers’s life at the outset.
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