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Like a certain energized bunny, Ryan Gosling\u2019s charmer in \u201cThe Fall Guy\u201d just keeps going as he runs and leaps, tumbles and punches and vaults through the air like a rocket. The actor has shed his \u201cBarbie\u201d pretty-in-pink look, if not his signature heat-seeking moves to play Colt Seavers, a stuntman with a long r\u00e9sum\u00e9, six-packs on his six-packs and a disregard for personal safety. Plunging 12 stories in a building atrium, though, is just another bruising day on the job for Colt until, oops, he nearly goes splat.<\/p>\n
Directed by David Leitch, \u201cThe Fall Guy\u201d is divertingly slick, playful nonsense about a guy who lives to get brutalized again and again \u2014 soon after it starts, Colt suffers a catastrophic accident \u2014 which may be a metaphor for contemporary masculinity and its discontents, though perhaps not. More unambiguously, the movie is a feature-length stunt-highlight reel that\u2019s been padded with romance, a minor mystery, winking jokes and the kind of unembarrassed self-regard for moviemaking that film people have indulged in for nearly as long as cinema has been in existence. For once, this swaggering pretense is largely justified.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a story, though it\u2019s largely irrelevant given that the movie is essentially a vehicle for Gosling and a lot of stunt performers to strut their cool stuff. Written by Drew Pearce and based (marginally) on the 1980s TV series<\/a> of the same title starring Lee Majors, it opens shortly before Colt\u2019s 12-story plunge goes wrong. After some restorative time alone baring his torso, he resumes stunt work, drawn by the promise of a reunion with his ex, Jody (a welcome if underused Emily Blunt). She\u2019s directing a science-fiction blowout that looks like the typical big-screen recycling bin, with bits from generic video games, the 2011 fantasy \u201cCowboys & Aliens<\/a>,\u201d and both the \u201cAlien\u201d and \u201cMad Max\u201d franchises. Cue the flirting and the fighting.<\/p>\n Leitch is a former stunt performer who has his own estimable r\u00e9sum\u00e9, which includes doubling for Brad Pitt, whom he later directed in \u201cBullet Train<\/a>.\u201d Leitch has a company<\/a> with Chad Stahelski, yet another former stunt performer turned movie director who\u2019s is best known for the \u201cJohn Wick\u201d series with Keanu Reeves. Working in tandem with physically expressive performers like Pitt, Reeves and Charlize Theron (Leitch directed \u201cAtomic Blonde<\/a>\u201d), the two filmmakers have, in the post-John Woo era, put a distinctive stamp on American action cinema with a mix of martial-arts styles, witty fight choreography and, especially, a focus on the many ways a human body can move (or hurtle) through space.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n