or
"What's the Message of My Films?" "Nihilism is a Valid World-view?"
Watching Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt's prickly banter when they were presenting at the Oscars this past year made one actually think that their upcoming movie The Fall Guy might be somewhat entertaining. Bear in mind that I'm one of those crusty souls with no heart and no sense of humor (and no taste, apparently) who is not a fan of director David Leitch. Or of producer David Leitch. I stopped watching the "John Wick" series after the first one, which I did not enjoy and I suffered through it wondering if it was, in fact, meant to be a comedy. I mean...c'mon...the stunts were only believable if you weren't considering what would logically be the collateral damage outside the frame. And Wick goes off because someone kills his dog. Really? That would be funny...if it wasn't so damned dumb. I mean, they made fun of it in Deadpool. You know, the good Deadpool...the first one...the one David Leitch didn't direct. I figure you have to have a screw loose to really get off on these films. That they're successful and have spawned their own series of films only further makes me hang my head and despair about the future of the medium.
In this, a loosely-based spin-off of "The Fall Guy" TV show from the 1980's, Gosling plays Colt Seavers (played on TV by Lee Majors*). At the beginning of the film, he's a successful stunt-man, doubling for star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a big box-office draw, and he is having a heating-up relationship with camera op Jody Moreno (Blunt) until he's called to repeat a stunt—a wire-drop inside a high-rise edifice—that goes wrong and he's put in the hospital with a busted back. He emerges 18 months later parking cars at an L.A. Mexican restaurant and swearing off his stunt-man career.
Besides, his phone isn't ringing, the one sure sign that nobody wants you in L.A..
Until, one day, the producer of those Tom Ryder movies, Gail Meyer, (Hannah Waddingham) calls to implore him that his services are once again needed—apparently Ryder has disappeared, whereabouts unknown (something Colt could care less about), but the signing bonus is the movie is being directed by first-time director Jody Moreno—former camera op, former flame. Colt gets on a plane to Australia where the film is shooting.
Told by Meyer that old flame Jody requested him specifically, Colt is sucker-punched when he finds out a) Jody didn't ask for him and b) she's surprised to see at all and c) she's pissed at how they broke up by not breaking up—Colt didn't return phone calls, didn't reach out, didn't do any of those things that men don't like to do, especially when they're fragile, physically and mentally. She proves her affection for him by having him repeatedly set on fire** and trip-wired to be slammed into a rock. Over and over again. Colt's way of responding to all of this is with his laconic "thumbs up" after surviving each take. Jody hates that. But, she still makes him do all that stunt work with a broken back. ("Get...on...a...plane, Colt!")
Um...you can see the crew in the sunglasses..."Props!"
So, immediately I began to question why Colt doesn't just leave as he was obviously there under false pretenses, and, if not the first thing, the second thing I would do after finding that out would be to verify if I was getting paid. Because, obviously, somebody in the front office is lying to him and if they're lying to him about that, there are probably all sorts of things they can't be trusted on. But, by this time, I had given up on the movie being any good and just hoping that it would eke out some entertainment.
It is, on occasion, because Gosling and Blunt are pro's and they can squeeze out entertainment no matter how necrotic the script is.
But, that's not how movies work these days. Entertaining as that may be, what the movie audience apparently wants, and the movie is determined to give them, is wall-to-wall practical action sequences. Things go boom, guys do gymnastic falls and fights, big puffs of smoke and dirt go up in the air for no real apparent reason, sparks fly. A lot. There are spectacular falls where Gosling pops up into the frame as if he did the stunt. Standard Operating Procedure. The movie is a professed love-letter to stunting people and, sure, I'm all for that. I'd rather see practical effects than CGI animation any day. Employ the hell out of 'stunt-people. But, pay them a living wage and make sure they have insurance, first. I mean, stunting is NOT a lost art. The only difference is it's being done in front of green-screens now.
It just doesn't look all that impressive when it's shown being filmed. Leitch doesn't exactly pull off the stunt that the story-stunts are more dangerous than the in-the-movie stunts (and they're still trying to make us believe the guy who cracked his spine a year and a half ago can do these things).
Two things did strike my mind while I was watching the thing scroll in one cortex and out the other: Movies save SO...MUCH...MONEY making a movie about making movies! You don't have to have sets, just people milling around with cameras and eating craft services, and walkie-talkies and cell-phones. You don't have to hide anything, or make believe it's real, and you can even shoot the dressing-trailers. It's so cost-effective as to be ridiculous.
The Fall Guy doesn't have a plot, so much as a thin thread to string between stunt sequences, like some of the really bad Roger Moore James Bond movies or the Mission: Impossible series...or like the Wick films. That seems so ass-backwards a way of making movies—well, of making movies that mean anything, anyway. For someone who sees movies as an art form, and its own unique form of communication, it's really a drag to see a movie like this.
The best you can say is: "Well, people were employed..."
Humor example: Blunt and Gosling are talking back and forth about story-approach,
when she suddenly asks "What about split-screen?"
And before you can say "Oh, they're not..." (which I did),
they go split-screen.
Laugh? (I didn't)
I never watched the TV version of "The Fall Guy"; this is as far as I ever got....
* Does Lee have a cameo? Yes, along with Heather Thomas in the post-credit scene (if you haven't walked out by then!) 
** Because she's an "old flame" "carrying a torch"? ...am I looking for sub-text that isn't there? Yeah, pretty sure I am!
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