The Fall Guy
“The Fall Guy easily avoids toxic tropes or obvious stereotypes.”
Title: The Fall Guy (2024)
Director: David Leitch 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Drew Pearce 👨🏼🏴 based on the TV series by Glen A. Larson 👨🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
Technical: 5/5
Corny action flicks are no stranger to the theater, from this year’s dead-on-arrival Argylle to the increasingly schlocky Fast and Furious series. All too many seem AI-generated, scrabbling for the lowest, laziest laughs. So it’s a huge relief when David Leitch’s The Fall Guy raucously entertains without condescending to its audience.
Sure, it’s written and directed by the guys behind Hobbs & Shaw (2019), a film that drops firmly into the aforementioned genre of “cue audience groan.” And it can hardly be called “original,” given how The Fall Guy is an adaptation from a 1980s TV series, also about a stunt performer and his sidekicks who solve capers in between takes. But thankfully, Leitch has Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt’s nuanced performances to propel this script from mere silliness into a story that’s grounded in effective drama.
At its core is a romance between Gosling’s Colt Seavers, a stunt double who breaks his back on a disastrous take and winds up leaving the industry, and Blunt’s Jody Moreno, a camerawoman who’s getting her first big shot in the director’s seat. Lesser actors could have leaned too far into the script’s self-referential winks and slapstick humor—how many times can we set Colt on fire and slam him against the side of a car for kicks? But with actors who deftly balance both humor and emotionality, The Fall Guy soars into something that’s funny, action-packed, and heartfelt.
Gender: 3.75/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
It’s great to see Leitch and screenwriter Drew Pearce put women in positions of power who walk the walk. No one is putting a lab coat on a glorified sex kitten and calling it a day. Instead, Jody appears in her element, working the camera and directing scores of actors and crew members with authority. She also regularly confers with other women on set, including Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), a slick producer who has her own agenda. Beyond these two main women, supporting and minor roles also feel gender-balanced, normalizing the sight of female technicians, prop masters, and assistants on set.
At the end of the day, though, this is still a movie about a guy. Gosling is the clear protagonist, indicated as much by the film’s title. The script is most interested in Colt’s perilous, labyrinthine journey to win Jody back. We don’t see much by way of Jody or Gail’s interiority, at least not beyond what’s telegraphed through the actors themselves. Nonetheless, the filmmakers do a great job of humanizing their female characters and casting them in enough roles that they never feel like tokens.
Race: 3/5
The film’s two main protagonists are white, as are its two main villains. That leaves one key role for an actor of color: Winston Duke wins the screen with his affable take on a competent stunt director, Dan Tucker. But as often as he appears, he’s portrayed squarely as a helpful friend to Colt without any other Black friends or coworkers. Dan drops everything to help during Colt’s shenanigans, easily pushed over by a “you owe me one” as the two dash off into mortal danger.
Still, Dan plays a welcome, positive role that audiences are meant to root for. Minor characters of color are a bit spottier. Stephanie Hsu appears, at first, as a stereotypically harried “Asian personal assistant,” Alma Milan. But her long scene culminates in a heart-pounding car chase, and by the time she’s kicking a goon out of a car, the theater audience I sat in broke out into applause. On the less-good side, the film’s only brown character with substantial dialogue, Doone (played by Arab Australian actor Matuse), has a cliched role as a drug dealer.
Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.75/5
The Fall Guy doesn’t push any boundaries on racial diversity; its four main characters, the writers, and the director are all white, and most of them are men. But women do assume positions of power and help drive the plot. At the end of the day, this is a showcase for Gosling, who smashes it as the titular “fall guy.” But with its easy avoidance of toxic tropes or obvious stereotypes, plus a metric ton of movie-magic fun, it’s easy to count this film as a must-watch this summer.
Like The Fall Guy? Try these other action comedies.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
Argylle (2024)
Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)