[Movie Review] On The Fall Guy (2024)

New Film Criticism by JB Minton

PROMPT: Create an action scene where we can't see the character's faces, but they are in love and fighting against great odds.

I’m not saying that the creatives who put this film out in the commercial marketplace of Cinema intended to denounce Hollywood’s true villains responsible for the American Film Industry’s current dire economic situation (SPOILER ALERT: it’s the Producers), but that’s what I saw when I watched The Fall Guy.

And I’m not saying this film knocks you over the head with a love for the craft of making movies that people want to watch by heroically portraying the technical performance artists necessary to make magic happen on screen, but that’s what I saw when I watched The Fall Guy.

This movie is a story about peak professionals working under enormous creative and financial pressure joined by an existential threat. It’s also a great love story filled with understandable action sequences that move fast enough for the tick-tocker but creative enough for the GenXer who hates The Phantom Menace like Harry Potter hated Voldemort.

The Fall Guy reminds us why we love to watch movies. If Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (2022) is a love letter to the technical craft of Heroic Action Cinema during the late 1960s, The Fall Guy is a love letter to the technical craft of Heroic Action Cinema in the 2020s. Yes, these films are very different (The Fabelmans is a drama wrapped around a love for action movies, while The Fall Guy is an action movie wrapped around a drama wrapped around a hit piece aimed at the heart of modern Hollywood). However, both expressions qualify as art when they simultaneously hit us on multiple levels.

At one point, before the beginning of the third act, our hero Colt Seavers explains how jet lag has impacted him from his recent trip from Los Angeles to Sydney after an eighteen-month recovery from a broken back caused by a mysterious malfunction during a high-profile movie shoot, where he played stunt man to the modern Tom Cruise, a beefy sociopath named Tom Ryder (a little on the nose, but I’ll allow it without derision).

Colt talks to the Producer who brought him to Australia and threw him into a dangerous conspiracy that has nearly killed him several times by this scene, the Producer tells him he must leave Australia. Colt tells her, “I’ve already had a terrible tomorrow.” And he still has the insanity of the third act to get through!

During his convalescence, Colt ghosted Jody, the sweet, pretty, and goofy camera operator he was in love with, on a true whirlwind romance that was supposed to end on a silent beach with both drinking “spiceemargarrrheedahs.” He broke her heart and his own because he was hurt and didn’t want to put them through the indignity of her having to wipe his ass every day because he couldn’t physically do it for himself.

Then, one day, the Executive Producer he’s trusted for fifteen years calls him back into action because he’s the only one who can save her latest picture. After landing in Australia and debriefing with that producer, he learns that Tom Ryder’s latest film is directed by the woman he loved and ghosted. Jody Moreno has finally gotten her Director’s chair, and this new fantasy superhero movie will be the next great fantasy superhero movie before the next greater fantasy superhero movie comes out! But Tom Ryder is missing, and only Colt Seavers can help them quietly recover him and get him back to work to save the love of his life’s artistic career.

What happens from here is a wild ride filled with incredible action sequences, hilarious dialogue, and some of the greatest comedic acting in modern movie-making. The Fall Guy is a tip-top narrative story about characters who are funny, beautiful, and more profound than the action story alone reveals, and this experience is as much as we can ask from American Cinema in 2024.

Two brilliant scenes stand out for me after the first viewing. The first of these takes place at 48:20 in the movie. Colt has been drugged and is being accompanied by an imaginary unicorn. Now, the unicorn is a brilliant on-screen indicator that what is happening to Cole is because he is under the influence of drugs. The unicorn eventually disappears, and the absence alerts us that Colt is back to his senses. The use of the unicorn as a prop in this scene, revealing the psychological condition of human subjects in the frame, is an example of the power of Cinema to say it all without saying a word. This scene, ironically, is filled with words because it’s a phone call. That’s right; it’s not text on the screen, a modern conceit deployed in other scenes in this film. However, this scene involves two artists speaking with words, revealing things they don’t say through words they mean on a deeper level. They create a ruse of conversation about art but talk about their love.

See, Jody didn’t ask for Colt to be here. And Colt didn’t know Jody would be here, either. The Producer (duh-duh) brought them together. Is it to get them back together or for other reasons the viewer is unaware? 

“What do you think about split-screen?” is how the conversation begins, where Jody asks his opinion on a creative choice for the film. In one of the more meta movements of modern movies, the film we are watching becomes a split screen, and the movement on both sides represents where the characters are in their feelings about each other. Watch the elements of each side move towards each other and sit together. Watch their love visually reignite through another powerful example of how Cinema conveys truths without naming them on the textual level.

The other scene I want to acknowledge is the karaoke scene where Colt is supposed to show up at a crew party at a karaoke bar late in the afternoon after an early shooting day towards the end of the project. He gets into a wild shoot-out, punch-out fight for survival, damaging a lot of Australian property. At the same time, the love of his life is told (by the Producer) that he left Australia without even saying goodbye to her. Jody changes her karaoke song to Phil Collins's Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now), which is blended between the actual music (playing while Colt fights for his life against trained killers in a dumpster being pulled through heavy traffic by a big truck going very fast!) and Jody’s heartbreaking cry over her stupidity of letting the person she loves walk out of her life without confessing her feelings and leaving the hurt and betrayal behind her. This latter story is an oldie but goodie, and only strong characters survive this moment when real heroes are born, the ones who sacrifice their selfish pain for unselfish love. It’s the greatest story ever told, the only one that truly matters.

This film is violent but not bloody. Murder is not glorified as a solution. Women are in positions of power, but the free man without power, armed with love and his two fists, is the hero who saves the day by following love in his life and letting the person he loves be the hero on stage for others. The Fall Guy is a movie about artists supporting each other and opening our hearts to let love rule. It’s also a movie about Producers without morals being the villains who destroyed Hollywood.

The Fall Guy (2024)

Directed by David Leitch

Written by Glen A. Larson (based on the television series created by) Drew Pearce (written by)

Producers: Guymon Casady | Ryan Gosling | David Leitch | Kelly McCormick

Technical Details:

126 minutes

Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1

Budget: $130M

Current Gross (5/28/24): $145.5M

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