Overview
Fresh off an almost career-ending accident, stuntman Colt Seavers has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job.
As someone who recalls sitting and watching Lee Majors as The Fall Guy on TV as a kid – a show I wanted to watch simply because Lee Majors had already become an icon via The Six Million Dollar Man – as well as being a fan of pretty much all of director David Leitch’s output to date, it is safe to say that I was looking forward to this film. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt being cast as the leads was just icing on the cake.
Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stuntman who works as the double for a famous action star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson). When a stunt goes wrong, injuring Seavers, he retreats from the industry and takes a job as a valet, abandoning his blossoming relationship with camera operator Jody Moreno (Blunt). However, 18 months later he is contacted by producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) who tells him that Jody wants him to work on her directorial debut action film, drawing him back into the stunt world. But with the lead actor, Ryder, missing, it appears that Colt has been recruited to body double for him and also find out where the star has gone.
As you would expect from a film set within the industry there are a lot of meta references and jokes at play throughout, from slyly commenting on cinematic conventions such as split-screen phone conversations, to discussions about third acts that aren’t written until midway through shooting. In addition, there is a huge focus on stunts and the unrecognised work that the performers do to make superstars look great on screen, which allows Leitch to really go to town with the set pieces throughout which, impressively, consist of a large number of physical stunts, avoiding overuse of CGI.
Gosling shines as Seavers, bringing a charm and grace to the part, as well as a deftness to comic pratfalls and slapstick, coupled with a dynamic energy when the moment calls for it. He and Blunt play well together, with a rapport between the pair selling their attraction to each other, and also allowing for some amusing exchanges when the pair are reunited after 18 months apart. Taylor Johnson as Tom Ryder is all ego and insistence of being a king of stunts, who performs all his own work, coming over as an amalgamation of a few A-lister action stars of prominence, and the actor is having as much fun here as he appeared to be having when he last worked with Leitch on Bullet Train. Rounding off the key cast, Waddingham is glorious on screen as a manipulative producer who is trying to hold a struggling production together by any means necessary.
Action, comedy and romance fuse together to create a wonderful big screen adventure, and a strong update of an old TV series. The end credits are accompanied by some behind the scenes footage of the various physical stunts performed, and the actual stunt teams who performed them, paying wonderful tribute to those unknown folk who make our stars look so fine. This all rounds off to be a fun film about a stuntman that is also a respectful tribute to stunt performers everywhere.