Genre: Action, Comedy
Directed By: David Leitch
IMDb: 7.1/10
Rotten Tomato: 81%
Box Office: $132.4 million
Bollywood commercial movies are broadly known for their melodramatic (or just dramatic) narratives, fun action scenes, and funky songs with energetic dances. Most of us watch Bollywood films to have some fun times. And today, I saw a Bollywood-type movie made in Hollywood: The Fall Guy (2024). It matches all the criteria a Bollywood movie has except the dance and song parts, of course.
The movie is actually a “sort of” adaptation of an American series, The Fall Guy, that started screening in 1981 and went on for five seasons. The only thing they kept similar is some of the characters’ names and professions.
In the movie, Colt Seavers (played by Ryan Gosling) is one of the best Hollywood stunt performers who mainly does all the stunts for Tom Ryder (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the “biggest action star in the world,” as his body double. And there’s Jody (played by Emily Blunt), a camera operator who wishes to be a ‘big-time’ Hollywood movie director one day. Jody and Colt have movie-standard love between them.
The problem appears when Colt does a stunt of a sky-high falling scene. There, an accident occurs and he gets injured for more than a year and stops being a stunt guy anymore. That’s when he becomes ‘The Fall Guy’ (sounds like a superhero origin). In the meantime, Colt completely ghosts Jody and literally disappears from everyone around. Eighteen months later, he gets a call from Gail, the producer of every Tom Ryder movie. She says Jody has been directing a film, and she wants Colt to join as a stunt performer in Sydney. Colt agrees to perform stunts as Tom’s body double to make it up to Jody, as he realizes that he was being a jerk boyfriend earlier. Will Colt and Jody have a happy ending together? Watch to know the rest.
Let’s get back to the first part, the reason I compared The Fall Guy (2024) with typical Bollywood films. I have a list of reasons, actually:
- The protagonist is handsome (c’mon, this is Ryan Gosling we’re talking about) and invincible because he’s the hero.
- “Only he is capable of doing stunts like this” / “he’s our best option”.
- He can fight every situation like a pro without having any sort of training whatsoever just because he’s the hero.
- He can dodge every bullet because he’s the hero.
- He fakes or escapes death because, well… he’s the hero.
- Villains are villains because they are erm… villains. They frame other people to cover up their crimes.
- There are misunderstandings between the hero and heroine. The hero keeps on trying to convince the heroine to give him a second chance.
- The police arrest the bad guys at the end of the movie.
If you have seen enough Indian commercial films, you should know what I mean. If you haven’t, then know that it’s the Bollywood action-comedy stereotype. Don’t get me wrong tho, I love Bollywood movies. I mean, who wouldn’t like watching a fun action movie without having the pressure of high philosophy and layered deep messages underneath? You may call this a bad taste in movies. Well, I never claimed to have a good one.
The movie introduces primary characters and plots within the first five minutes through voice-over narration, which helps audiences get engaged and jump right into the story immediately. The screenplay was pretty fast, so there weren’t many moments to get bored or annoyed. Comic scenes were ‘really funny’ most of the time. The acting was average, sometimes below average. The chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt as a romantic pair wasn’t bad.
In The Fall Guy, we get to see some heavy action scenes that require a hell of a lot of stunts. There were more than 100 professionals who performed stunts, including five body doubles for Ryan Gosling and Taylor-Johnson alone. The movie itself is a big shout-out to all the stunt performers of the film industry who take all the risks and do all the tough parts: The Unsung Heroes. So, in the movie, every time you see an action scene, you’ll be able to point out, “They used a stuntman to do that scene” or realize, “Stuntmen did a pretty good job in the movie.” While watching most other movies, we don’t think of them at all. That was the point behind all of its overly dramatic action scenes, I guess. Also, the movie raises a thought, “Why isn’t there an Oscar for Stunts?”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the movie. Perhaps I liked it more than it deserves. I think The Fall Guy (2024) is a fun-to-watch movie with family and friends, even with kids.
