The Fall Guy: A Stuntman's Love Letter

Release Date：Feb/9/2024

Genre：Comedy/Drama

Director：Pawo Choyning Dorji

Cast：Tandin Wangchuk、Tandin Phubz、Kelsang Choejay、Tandin Sonam、Choeying Jatsho

Viola's Rating：7.5

Stuntman-turned-director David Leitch is famous for action feature films such as Atomic Blonde, Bullet Train, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw and being the producer of John Wick. Along with Oscar-nominated Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, Leitch presented a love letter to all the stuntmen, The Fall Guy, which was released on May 3, 2024.

This action comedy tells the story of a down-and-out stuntman, Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), who must find the missing star of his ex-girlfriend, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt)'s blockbuster film.

Although romance isn’t listed as The Fall Guy’s genre, the flick surrounds the chemistry between Blunt and Gosling’s characters. It’s not a boy-meets-girl story since Jody was Colt’s ex-girlfriend. Audiences are brought halfway into their story. With the impeccable soundtrack full of rock band songs from the 70s and some spice of Taylor Swift’s ballad, moviegoers start to ship the protagonists not long after the motion picture begins.

However, the main point of making The Fall Guy is still to draw attention to the hidden labor of stuntmen and to honor their efforts. Therefore, all the stunts in the movie were performed by real stuntmen instead of utilizing CGI. The shooting site and the picture itself feel like an amusement park to the stuntmen. A bunch of classic standard stunts were shown in The Fall Guy, and the crew even broke a world record while filming it. The last one-third is indeed a tear-driven love letter to all the stuntmen.

Even though the last part of The Fall Guy is very adrenaline-driven, the pace of the feature film is generally a little bit slow in the beginning. Not only are some repetitive scenes unnecessary, but also the whole film drags on. The length of The Fall Guy is about two hours, which is not long compared to flicks nowadays, but it’s also not so short, but it does feel like it takes longer than two hours to finish.

Look on the bright side, The Fall Guy does focus on the essence of the stuntmen’s job, which we either didn’t know about or tended to ignore. All the stunts look so exciting on the big screen, but for the people who perform them, although they are professionals, all the actions and movements hurt. Since it’s their job to make the impossible scenes possible, as long as they don’t get hurt, they carry on.

Aside from drawing attention to the stuntmen’s hidden labor and honoring their efforts, The Fall Guy also pays tribute to other classic action motion pictures. From action choreography, and lines said by the characters to set design, Director Leitch included elements of action movies that the world should always remember, and hopefully, there will be an award for stuntman at the Oscars in the future.

Picture Credit: IMDb