The Fall Guy - A Very Entertaining and Fun Action Comedy Movie Loosely Based on 1980s TV Series

After seeing another film earlier, my wife and I continued our movie marathon experience two days ago with this one that I had been eyeing for weeks. We were a bit worried at first if the studio would be full and our favorite seats had been taken. But luckily we still got them. OK, let's get on with the movie then.

Brief Story Line

Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling - Barbie, First Man etc) was a professional stuntman who had been taking unplanned break for some time. When movie producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham - Ted Lasso TV series, Hocus Pocus 2 etc) convinced him to work again as stunt double for famous movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson - Tenet, The Wall etc), he was still not interested. But Colt changed his mind after being told that he would be working with his former girlfriend Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt - A Quite Place, The Adjustment Bureau etc) in her directorial debut.

As Colt worked on the set with the stunt coordinator and old friend of his, Dan Tucker (Winston Duke - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Us etc), he would soon find out that his return was unexpected. It also came with additional simple request from Gail which led him to various chain of events that would have affects on his life.

So what would happen to Colt and his personal mission? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

As someone who had watched the TV series of the same title that this movie was based on, I was intrigued in finding out if it would be as entertaining as it was. Yes the series was shown long time ago while I was just a little kid, but I could still remember that I had fun watching it. The film started off brightly with the introduction of the main characters and the scene that showed a bit of what to expect. And it continued at a steady pace with some humor along the way which made it more fun. But the thing that we liked the most was definitely the chemistry between Colt and Jody. It was truly refreshing and their characters were really charming and likable.

Of course the movie would not be exciting if there was no element of mystery. Even though it was not the complicated kind but it was enough to keep us interested till the very end. There was no shocking twists here as most of the surprises were quite predictable, though I do not believe that was the intention of the movie maker anyway. This film was directed by David Leitch whose credits included Bullet Train, Deadpool 2 with few others, and written by Drew Pierce who was the writer & director of Hotel Artemis as well as other films. So they were quite experienced and their collaboration here was fantastic as could be seen by its high entertaining value and earning critics praise.

In term of action this was quite top notch. It was not too over the top and no overly use of CGI. Just old fashion fight scenes with some special effects and blue screen. It was quite obvious they would require a lot of stunts which was just perfect as the movie was about a stuntman. During the closing credits, we would be shown some of the stunts created and the people working on them, accompanied by the song "Unknown Stuntman" which was from the TV show sung by Lee Majors. Yes, the series starred Lee himself (The Six Million Dollar Man TV series etc) as Colt and Heather Thomas as Jody. Btw, there was a brief mid end credit scene that you could wait for. 

Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were also additional cast like Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once etc) as Tom Ryder's personal assistant Alma Milan, Teresa Palmer (Message from the King etc) as the movie's co-star Iggy Starr, Ben Knight (Bay of Fires TV series etc) as one of the bad guys Dressler and few others. While Gosling and Blunt were definitely the major attraction, I thought that Aaron Taylor-Johnson was also perfect on the role of obnoxious major movie star. Oh there were few cameos too in the film. 

Overall this was a really enjoyable action comedy movie. Although it has a quite long duration of 126 minutes, but it was mostly fun and entertaining (aside from one rather weird and pretty useless scene involving Iggy Starr in the middle). The action was great, the romance was pleasant to watch and the humor was funny and not in a forced kind of way. We genuinely could laugh on the comedy. This is the kind of movie that was suitable to be seen on large screen of a cinema and supported by awesome sound effect like the one we saw this at. My wife and I truly enjoyed this and felt happy when we left the theater. So if you are looking for a fun, charming and delightful action comedy movie, this one would certainly tick all the boxes and I am sure you would enjoy it as much as my wife and I did.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars