IanTheCool
CS! Gold
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 21,496 
Likes: 2,864
Location:
Last Online Nov 24, 2024 19:25:15 GMT -5
|
Post by IanTheCool on May 6, 2024 7:37:58 GMT -5
There were a few moments early on in Fall Guy I was worried it was going to go down down the Argylle route of being utter trash. In particular I'm thinking of the fight in the night club when he's on drugs and the random sword attack. There are also some stylistic choices that are fun, but not done all too deftly, like the split screen talk.
But I must say that this movie did end up winning me over. Ryan Gosling and especially Emily Blunt, who was wonderful in this, lead the way with their charm and give us two characters you really want to see things work out for.
I also liked the movie as a celebration of movie stunts and stunt people. Thew movie itself has some great ones, which while watching you are caught up with Ryan Gosling playing the stuntman doing them, then at the end remember that those stunts themselves were also stunts. (sorry). But I also liked how many of the action scenes, especially those at the climax, were rooted in stuntwork.
So while skeptical at first, I ended up really enjoying myself.
7/10
|
|
PhantomKnight
CS! Gold
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 20,529
Likes: 3,132
Location:
Last Online Nov 24, 2024 20:25:21 GMT -5
|
Post by PhantomKnight on May 6, 2024 21:06:48 GMT -5
This one feels fairly straightforward, for the most part. It's a fun movie! But I'll fully admit that the ride starts out kind of bumpy. The First Act has some pacing and editing choices, at times, that made me worried that director David Leitch and screenwriter Drew Pearce had maybe overcooked this thing, but once the film settles into its story better and more firmly establishes its identity, it's all pretty smooth sailing from there. It positions itself as a romantic action comedy, but I gotta say that it might actually work better as an action film than as a romantic comedy. Yet, that's through no fault of either Ryan Gosling or Emily Blunt, because their chemistry together is strong enough to rise above the material they're given -- specifically, the banter. While that part is serviceable, it also feels like the script could've stood another writer more gifted with comedic dialogue to come in for some punch-ups there. Because while the banter scenes ARE still funny, it's more because Gosling and Blunt are able to sell them so well just through their natural charisma alone more so than the dialogue being poppy, necessarily. Also making up for that is the action sequences being so damn good. It's very refreshing to see a big budget studio movie recognize and celebrate the value of good old-fashioned stuntwork and those who do that work, and it's clear that David Leitch is infusing this thing with a real sense of passion on his part, based on his personal experiences, and that passion translates well into a movie that's highly entertaining to watch. Even if the movie kind of weirdly has two climaxes, The Fall Guy still works, as both a salute/celebration to the art form of stuntwork and moviemaking, as well as a throwback of sorts to 80's-style action movies.
***/****
|
|
Dracula
CS! Gold
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 26,105
Likes: 5,732
Location:
Member is Online
|
Post by Dracula on May 7, 2024 19:40:37 GMT -5
The Fall Guy(5/1/2024) In early 2021 the increasingly reactionary and cranky “comedian” Bill Maher aired a rather odious and proudly ignorant monologue about the upcoming Academy Awards scenario where he complained that the nominees that year were “downers” that were “virtue signaling” and “woke.” As tends to happen when people say hacky shit like this about “highbrow” movies he noted the failures of the movies in question at the box office compared that week’s top grosser Godzilla Vs. Kong. Paradoxically Maher then says “not that I want to see Godzilla Vs. Kong either!” It’s easy to bash the contradictory logic of assholes who complain about Oscar movies, but you get the same issue when you deal with people on the other end of the spectrum who complain endlessly about the stupidity of Hollywood franchise CGI-fest but still go to them instead of hitting up the art houses to make finer cinema profitable. Instead both of these people seem to want some sort of “Goldilocks” film which is still entertainment for basic people which won’t challenge them or make them think but which doesn’t engage in the more maximalist trends of modern Hollywood blockbusters.
However, there is a difference between stated preference and revealed preference and for the last decade audiences have revealed that they really want franchise shit. But 2024 feels like the year that might finally put that to the test. Last year several superhero movies flopped at the box office, suggesting audiences really are finally hungry for something different and the successes of Barbie and Oppenheimer suggest that there may finally be an appetite for non-sequels that present audiences with something a bit more actor driven. If that’s the case then this summer is going to be the real trial by fire for that as D.C. doesn’t have any movies coming out and the MCU only has one and there are a handful of other options that could prove to be trendsetters if they succeed. The real canary in the coal mine seems to be the summer movie season’s first film The Fall Guy, which comes out on the first Friday in May, a date that has been held by an MCU movie damn near every year for the better part of fifteen years. If the film can become a box office smash it could be indicative of a sea change at least symbolically if not literally given that it’s kind of everything people have been asking for: it’s not about a superhero, it isn’t a sequel, it’s sold on the chemistry between the movie stars on its poster, and the fact that it’s about stunt performers makes it inherently a statement against the overuse of CGI in modern blockbusters. So I must say I have a certain investment in this thing becoming a hit, but does that mean it’s a good movie unto itself?
The film is ostensibly an adaptation of a 70s T.V. show that I’d never heard of despite usually having some knowledge of classic television. As best as I can tell from my research it has nothing in common with that except for the title and the theme of stunt men so don’t worry too much about that. The film is about a stunt performer named Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) who specializes in doubling a movie star named Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and who had a fling with a camera operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) before he was injured in a botched stunt, at which point he cut himself off from her and the movie industry. However, he eventually gets a call from Ryder’s agent/producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) saying that Jody has been tapped to direct Tom Ryder’s next movie and they really need Colt to come out and double for him. The prospect of reuniting with Jody is enough to bring him out but when he gets there he finds that Gail has a bit of a double agenda as she wants Colt to help her retrieve Tom from some shady characters he’s fallen in with, which sparks an adventure that may well put this stuntman in very real danger.
The Fall Guy is ultimately a very lighthearted take on the summer blockbuster, essentially a romantic comedy but one that has an action element added to it because of the stuntman angle and the murder plot that emerges in it. So a lot of the movie hinges on the chemistry between Gosling and Blunt and I would say that, yeah, they pull that off. It’s not like a normal romcom where you’re in suspense over whether the two will fall for each other as they’ve already pretty much done that at the beginning, instead it’s like a movie length version of that part of the formula where they split over some misunderstanding and we follow them as they rekindle things over the course of the adventure. As for the action element, well, as the concept would suggest it’s a movie with a whole lot of fairly impressive stunt work. The film operates on the perhaps questionable logic that someone who can do stunt work would have the skills to be a somewhat competent action hero in real life when pressed and we do indeed see this dude pull off some good moves. Not every action scene here is a winner, there’s an awkward sequence in a nightclub and what should have been one of the movie’s better set-pieces is compromised a bit by the strange decision to intercut it with a song performance, but for the most part they work well for the movie and there’s also some interesting behind the scenes material involving the trade of stunt performing.
The film was directed by a guy named David Leitch who was himself a stunt performer and choreographer before becoming a director and rose to fame as the uncredited co-director of John Wick. His former collaborator Chad Stahelski ended up sticking with that franchise while Leitch went on to other things like Atomic Blonde and Bullet Train. Frankly I think Stahelski might have been the superior director out of that duo, he’s got a slicker style and a bit more of a feel for brutality in his action scenes, but Leitch’s lighter touch and more comedic sensibilities are likely the better fit for this movie. The film’s screenplay by Drew Pearce is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand a lot of the dialogue here is appropriately witty and it constructs a nice simple little romance for the two leads. It also mixes in some kind of meta elements in which the making of the film-within-a-film mirrors the actual film, which is hardly Adaptation level in its cleverness but is fun enough to give flavor to a film like this. On the other hand, well, there are definitely some glaring plot hole to be found here and some character behaviors and motivations to be found here that don’t quite add up. If that CinemaSins youtube channel is still around they will definitely find a bunch of stuff here to complain about.
The Fall Guy is a very nice piece of escapist entertainment that mostly lives up to its promise of being a summer blockbuster that’s made “like they used to make ‘em,” by which I mean it’s the kind of high concept non-franchise action movie that was made pretty regular back in… let’s say the early 2000s. That’s very cool and this will be an easy movie to recommend to the normies, but I do think it’s important to not make this into something it isn’t as I do think there’s a temptation to overrate it given what it potentially represents in terms of the evolution of summer blockbusters. I’m definitely rooting for the movie and consider it fine entertainment but don’t consider it to be anything terribly substantive and it’s not something I necessarily expect to remember for months on end or to consider it one of the year’s best or anything. But man, if audience pleasing programmers like this can’t attract people to theaters we’re probably in trouble because this does what most people theoretically want and that might just not be enough. ***1/2 out of Five
|
|
