The Fall Guy Review: A crazy and adrenaline-filled ride capable of telling with smiles and dreaminess, as well as melancholy nostalgia, what cinema once was, as well as what cinema today is and potentially will be in the years to come, between coolness and clumsiness, signed by David Leitch, Drew Pearce, Emily Blunt, and Ryan Gosling.
There are mainly three questions that every spectator should ask themselves before reaching the theater, sitting down in the armchair and comfortably letting themselves go to the great spectacle offered by The Fall Guy, David Leitch's sixth film as director, written by Drew Pearce, as well as a film adaptation of the famous series 80's TV show Profession Danger, directed by Glen Larson.
The first. When was the last time we saw Ryan Gosling driving a car amidst meta-cinema, intertwining love and violence? The second. When was the last time we saw Ryan Gosling struggling with blatant sentimentality, the son of a principle of eternal youth? Third and last.
He was a sex symbol (he still is) and thus a true star of post-2000 Hollywood capable of sharpening over the years the technicalities of an extremely complex interpretative register, the one in subtraction slowly faded until reaching its exact opposite, transforming him into a real chatterbox in the wake of Ryan Reynolds' hilarious and verbose Deadpool. From here it comes naturally to ask, why could only Ryan Gosling be the protagonist of The Fall Guy?
Even the talkative Gosling was once laconic
Going in order. The answer to the first question is inevitably Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn. In fact, on that occasion (thirteen years ago), Gosling took on the role of the fearsome, laconic, and violent plot of the film, who in some way and more than anything else contributed to making Winding Refn what he is today, therefore an author whose fame is recognized internationally and no longer confined exclusively to his homeland, as happened in the very first years of activity.
But returning to Gosling and Drive. Even in that case, everything happened in Hollywood and the pilot played by Gosling worked as a stuntman, fell in love with a woman who was difficult to reach, and became a ruthless avenger of the night because of love, confusing it with chaos, until the memorable epilogue.
The Pages of Our Lives by Nick Cassavetes, on the other hand, was the last visual testimony of a Ryan Gosling not yet grappling with the modeling of interpretative registers destined shortly thereafter to change him forever. Therefore the protagonist of an extremely free, light-hearted, sweet, romantic story in its most surreal, pure perfect, and consequently attractive form, albeit still innocent and apparently uninterested in the work on the body and the cool and sexy energy of the characters played.
Finally arriving at the third and final question, therefore on why it could only be Ryan Gosling, looking at the distinctive features and thus at the backstory of Colt Seavers, the protagonist of The Fall Guy, one might answer, because we are not looking at anything else if not to Ryan Gosling himself. Therefore the Hollywood path of the latter and thus to his chameleon-like ability to move easily between registers, while possessing the physicality of a well-defined and muscular genre such as action.
Hence titles like Gangster Squad, The Nice Guys, The Gray Man, and others, which The Fall Guy inevitably mocks, while honoring them through the languages of the parodistic and the grotesque, highlighting the romantic, sweetly awkward, and farcical side that has belonged to Gosling for a very long time, although overshadowed, partly due to what Hollywood (re)asks and partly by choice of Gosling himself, certainly due to the fear of losing that fearsome aura, which in this case, and it is truly fortunate, it appears completely absent, as well as remote, whereas it has instead been fixed, incessant and rigorous.
The Fall Guy: evaluation and conclusion
The Fall Guy, looking at its phenomenal albeit incorrect advertising, could have seemed like everything it actually isn't. Although written by one of the leading authors of modern action, David Leitch, The Fall Guy is not simply an action film. Rather a hilarious, verbose, sweetly nostalgic, and madly screwball love letter to the cinema, or rather, to the great cinema, to its sketches, to its legendary love stories, and thus to its stars and divas and to its incredible ability to shape dreams and thus life, communicating with it until the end of days.
The stuntmen in this film then, returning to the star system, are by no means extras destined for oblivion and cinematic background, as in reality they would seem to be, rather individuals continually celebrated, requested, and observed with dreamy and admiring glances, therefore stars. Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) was once this, star, who in a period of great adrenaline, laconism, and non-verbal language, fully experienced the love, fame, and fun of the set, until his fall and shutdown of the carousel.
As always happens, however, the past is destined to return, saving Seavers from a miserable task (Ryan Gosling reminds us in this first part of Poolman's Chris Pine, soon moving away from him), bringing him back to those Hollywood entertainments that the latter well remembers and thus to the love bonds, no longer idyllic, rather badly interrupted between Seavers himself and Jody Moreno (a splendid and visibly amused Emily Blunt), the one who was once the camera operator and who today sits on the director's throne, without knowing anything about Seavers' arrival and thus about the violence and chaos that will soon follow.
On the other hand, we know that cinema, Hollywood more generally, understood both as a star panorama and as a geographical area belonging to the city of Los Angeles, is a dangerous place (Quentin Tarantino told this perfectly in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood), but if you know how to move, paying attention to cheap criminals, stars who go to their heads by doing follies, unicorns and stage props that cause nothing to the "bad guys" other than more acting, then you're safe. What you cannot escape, however, is once again love.
Exhilarating and memorable, a direct confrontation on the set of the film that Jody Moreno is directing, therefore in front of the entire crew and cast of the same, regarding the theme of the broken bond and the possibility of recreating it, and again, an equally memorable confrontation with fire and hands naked in the dream apartment of former star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson moves towards the unaware idiots of Coen's cinema) and extreme cinephilia (among the many characters and titles, Jason Bourne and The Last of the Mohicans are mentioned ) everything genre, except death and violence.
There are many interesting aspects of The Fall Guy, among them the presence of Taylor Swift who forces an apparently unshakeable star to tears, and also the surprisingly parodic drift of a cinema that has previously explored completely other territories than that and so this Gosling's return to pure and blatant romanticism, albeit exhilarating here, typical of the cult eternally admired by and by its fans, The Pages of Our Lives.
Taylor Swift is indeed present, but she gives up space right away, or almost immediately, to many other artists and emotional states, revealing a sensational soundtrack, which, just like Leitch, Blunt, and Gosling do, takes the viewer by the hand, leading him through a crazy and adrenaline rush capable of telling with smiles and dreamy as well as melancholic nostalgia, what cinema once was, as well as what cinema today is and potentially will be in the years to come.
Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt have never appeared on the big screen so awkwardly and ferociously attractive, The Fall Guy gives us this too. That should be more than enough.