Lately it seems that the only way you can reliably get a romantic comedy produced at a reasonable budget is to have guns in it. Sometimes it works, like in the charming enough Sandra Bullock vehicle, ‘The Lost City’. And sometimes we’re left with reckon with what they were thinking when watching the trailer for ‘Shotgun Wedding’ or the Apple TV+ film ‘Ghosted’. Sadly it seemed most of the time the desire to get people (primarily men) interested in romance is to put it hand in hand with violence and action.

It was something I was concerned about going into ‘The Fall Guy’, how long would we be allowed to have Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt rely solely on their chemistry and acting ability before a fire fight would break out? It’s in this balance that the film truly succeeds. While the first half is rife with action set pieces, relying on Gosling’s Colt Seavers stuntman work to be the bulk of it, the film largely stays away from any massive gun fights until the back part of the second half. It is a breath of fresh air, in the year of our lord 2024, to have two recently Oscar nominated actors play against each other in a romantic comedy that fights against the impulse to turn itself into an action comedy, even if they occasionally throw in the towel at various points.

I’m not saying it’s not there mind you, or that it doesn’t ever happen, but I’ll take 90 minutes of chemistry between two acclaimed actors even if it means towards the end there will be bad guys with guns. And honestly? The fact that Colt Seavers relies exclusively on his stuntman abilities to dispatch the bad guys rather than an armory of weapons is an inspired choice. Director David Leitch knows we don’t need to see Seavers go John Wick on a barrage of goons, we want to see him reenact the Miami Vice Stunt Show, a real stunt show that ran at Universal Studios Hollywood amusement park from 1987-1995. It’s much more exciting to see him jump a car or see Ryan Gosling lit on fire and thrown against a wall to pay penance for leaving Emily Blunt’s Jody Moreno high and dry.

As far as standard rom-com tropes the movie does a reasonable job of avoiding those as well. It helps that what many consider to be an annoying habit in the genre, “problems that could be solved if two people simply talked to each other” occurs at the beginning of the movie, as opposed to the climax. The film is Colt Seavers’ quest for redemption, both as a comeback to the stuntman community for a botched job at the beginning, as well as to win back the woman he loves. Navigating the tense relationship between him and Moreno puts him on his heels, and makes him vulnerable. An easy hero to root for, made even more vulnerable when he blasts Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well’ through tears as we’re taken on a flashback of Seaver’s and Moreno’s past relationship. It’s the kind of funny delightful performance that made Ryan Gosling a shoe-in at the Oscars for his Ken performance, and got him a 2016 Joey Nomination for ‘The Nice Guys’.

The plot in and of itself is straight down the middle, the lead actor Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson), the man that Colt Seavers is a stuntman for, has gone missing. Producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) wants Colt to go find him. It’s here where I start getting nervous though. And while the movie does drift away from a delightful performance based rom-com, it never fully abandons it. Jody Moreno pops in and out of proximity to Colt Seavers, keeping the line of their relationship taught, never letting us forget that the goal here is not really to find Ryder. It’s to make sure Jody Moreno’s movie can be made, and that hopefully by doing so Seavers can win her back.

It’s only when Emily Blunt is off screen that it wanders a little further than I’d like, there’s a car chase through Sydney that’s heavy on CGI, there’s a gun battle where Seavers teams up with his long time friend and stunt coordinator Dan Tucker (Winston Duke), and there’s a brief sword fight between Seavers and the lead actress of the film being worked on Iggy Starr (Teresa Palmer). But even some of these scenes make an effort of balancing the human side of the feature. The background music for the car chase is Jody Moreno belting ‘You Oughta Know’ by Alanis Morissette, probably the best needle drop in the picture, among a litany of terrific soundtrack choices.

The final set piece is a massive 225 foot car jump, and both in the movie and on the screen it’s plainly saying, “we cannot do this with CGI”, regular action movies must be salivating at this stunt. Throughout the movie it’s advocating not just for practical effects, but recognition for the craft crews that work impossibly hard on these movies. If Colt Seavers jumping two hundred and twenty five feet over a forty foot ditch is the love letter that finally gets us a stunt work Oscar category? Then I’m thankful for Leitch, Gosling, Blunt, and everyone else involved for writing it so well.

4/5