The Fall Guy (2024)

Plot of the Fall Guy: Colt Seavers, the stunt double for Tom Ryder has suffered from an accident during a stunt and now parks cars at a restaurant. He gets a call from Gail Meyer, the producer of the Sci-Fi film “Metalstorm” to come out to Australia to reprise his former role. Particularly because Jody, his former lover, is directing her first film. He arrives to find that Tom Ryder is missing and Jody, rather than asking for him, is miffed y his arrival. He goes in search of Ryder, finding a body in a bath, and in time he and Jody start to get together again. However, Gail tries to get rid of him, unsuccessfully, and Colt finds Ryder’s assistant who has a phone with the scene of Ryder accidentally killing his then stunt man. Meanwhile Gail fingers Colt for the killing using deepfake stuff, but with Jody on side maybe he can outwit the villains.

Content: No sex or nudity and just a bit of drinking, particularly when Colt drinks something spiked and hallucinates.  Once Colt gets to the film set he is set fire to and thrown about, in a stunt man way. The set of Metalstorm is interesting, with various aliens involved. There is fighting, with Colt and his friends taking advantage of their knowledge of former film scenes. One quite extensive scene of a fight for some reason on a skip lorry. Then a scene of a power boat crashing into a petrol station and blowing up. As we get to the climax, stunts involving cars, some spectacular and the big helicopter scene.

A View: This outing has been moderately well liked by everybody, but at the time of writing has not actually made any money. Gosling and Blunt are terrific, but we expected that, and the soundtrack is great, but the romance was submerged in a surfeit of stunts. I know that’s what it is really about but maybe David Leitch, a former stunt man, did not see how well the actors were making the romance work. So not really a must watch, unless you are fixated on seeing unlikely stunts being carried out in a sort of tongue in cheek way.

Fun Fact: One of the stunts using a car for a “cannon roll” broke the world record for the most rolls using the technique.