David Leitch’s The Fall Guy begins with a compilation of some of the most death-defying stunts from Leitch’s Universal filmography. We are presented with scenes from Atomic Blonde and Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw sprinkled through clips from other classic and recent action pictures to highlight just how dangerous and heroic stuntwork is.
Stunt professionals risk their lives daily to entertain us and keep their fellow actors safe. The fact that no Oscar recognizes their work is absurd. While casting directors will finally have time to shine in 2026, there seems to be little to no advancement on a stuntwork-related award when their contributions to some of the biggest action films are at the forefront of their success.
Before the movie started, Leitch and star Ryan Gosling thanked audiences for coming out to the cinema to see a ‘love letter’ to stunt professionals, a take which has been repeated constantly through early reactions from critics who were able to see the film at SXSW and its subsequent advanced screenings. Credit where credit is due, the film’s marketing campaign has been one of the most ingenious in years, culminating in the greatest world premiere I’ve ever seen, with fistfights, candy glass crashes, motorcycle stunts, and a parkour run inside the Dolby Theatre so insane it must be seen to be believed.
This event made me believe that the movie, based on a television series starring Lee Majors and Heather Thoqqqw1111111mas, would be a true love letter to Leitch’s upbringing in the film industry. The filmmaker began his career in Hollywood as a stunt performer and coordinator, notably working on The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions with Chad Stahelski, whom he collaborated with to helm John Wick in 2014. And while Stahelski has had quite a successful career as a filmmaker in continuing the John Wick franchise, one can’t say the same for Leitch.
While his action sequences in films like Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Bullet Train are without reproach, none of these films know how to properly pace their story or, more importantly, when to end their scenes. Bullet Train was particularly disappointing since the on-screen ensemble seemed guaranteed to at least be somewhat entertaining. But it kept going, and going, and going, and going, and going, without knowing when to dial the humor or over-the-top situations down, throwing one plot twist after the next in an attempt to add energy, when all it did was exhaust the audience.
Unfortunately, The Fall Guy suffers from the same narrative trappings as Leitch’s previous films, though a few moments of inspiration prevent it from being a total disaster. The opening scene, which immediately establishes how dangerous being a stunt professional is, sees stunt double Cole Seavers (Gosling), perform an incredibly harrowing fall for a film starring blockbuster action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The stunt goes horribly wrong, leaving Cole severely injured and causing him to abandon his career as a professional.
Many years later, while working as a valet, Cole receives a call from producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), who asks him to return to the world of filmmaking by doubling for Ryder on the set of Metalstorm, which is currently being directed by Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), Cole’s former girlfriend. Gail tells Cole it’s time to leave the past behind and return to doing what he loves, but as he travels to Australia for the film, it is revealed that he was brought back to find Tom, who has gone missing without the director knowing.
Gail wants Cole to find Tom and bring him back to set, while the stunt double also sees a chance to reunite with Jody after he cut communication with her after his accident. However, when the situation may be more serious than Gail initially thought, Cole is stuck in a series of events he clearly did not sign up for and must now find out who is behind Tom’s disappearance and why he abruptly vanished from the set.
After its horrifying opening scene, The Fall Guy has difficulty finding its footing. The humor isn’t particularly entertaining, except for a fun joke involving Taylor Swift’s All Too Well, but even that scene goes too long. Leitch still hasn’t mastered the art of pacing, which is far more important than any action scene. If everything surrounding its fun action isn’t interesting, how do you expect me to be invested in some of the movie’s bigger setpieces? That’s not saying there aren’t any funny moments, far from it, but any scene that got a laugh out of me kept going (and going) to the point where the joke – or situation – quickly became unfunny.
One such scene sees Cole being set on fire repeatedly as Jody gives him directorial advice that closely resembles what occurred between the two after his accident. While the initial premise of the scene is hilarious, with one particular moment leaving the audience in complete stitches, the scene endlessly finds detours to continue it, always trying to add one more joke to the proceedings instead of appreciating the fact that it has two great jokes and could’ve moved on to the next scene. This insistence in interminably stretching its comedic moments ruins the film’s pacing and the chemistry between Gosling and Blunt, whose characters are reduced to pure quip machines.
Perhaps that’s what mainstream audiences want these days, but there’s very little palpable chemistry between the two leads, who still manage to give good performances with shoddy material. Blunt is always game to have fun and clearly enjoys being in the director’s chair as Jody. Some of the earlier scenes between the two are legitimately great, if not only due to how naturally talented both performers are. They can be given about anything and crush it, which they frequently do, even if the script never knows when they need to stop telling jokes and begin developing their on-screen relationship.
Gosling himself is similarly charming above the material, and it’s not hard for him to become a bonafide action star in this, especially during a bravura setpiece involving Cole and his trusty dog Jean-Claude (who only understands commands in French, a nice touch) as they attempt to save Tom’s assistant (played by Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Stephanie Hsu) from a horde of baddies. The sequence is terrifically playful, and the movie works best when it fully leans into more comedic action instead of drawn-out comedy sequences.
When the action hits, it literally pops off the IMAX screen, with cinematographer Jonathan Sela continuing his relationship with Leitch by giving The Fall Guy a visually enthralling and painterly look. A drug trip-fueled fight scene set in a club has one of the most exciting uses of neon colors I’ve seen in a major Hollywood blockbuster in some time, one that understands that good action needs to be shot with depth of field in mind. In an era where most large-scale blockbusters have forgotten how to shoot action, often preferring the classic grey sludge with no depth, it feels refreshing to see Leitch and Sela continue to craft fun and kinetic action scenes with immaculate-looking photography, whether in Metalstorm’s diegesis or outside of it.
These moments give The Fall Guy enough life support to at least feel like a fun time, and there are enough great action sequences to hold our attention (one involving Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Winston Duke is a complete hoot). But when the movie returns to its plot, it doesn’t take long to reveal the cracks in its foundation, which hinders most of the character development and good intentions this film initially had as a “love letter” to stunt professionals. Beyond a character asking Cole if there’s an Oscar for stunt professionals, the movie doesn’t do much to give legitimate stakes or at least celebrate their daring feats.
There’s no legitimate character exploration in what drives Colt, as a stunt professional, to continuously risk his life for the camera despite an almost career-ending injury. In fact, when he returns to the set, the film completely ignores Colt’s injury during its main action sequences, despite Leitch and writer Drew Pearce showcasing to us, in the film’s opening moments, that his back is much more fragile than it was before the accident. And yet, when confronted by Tom’s girlfriend (played here by Teresa Palmer) with a sword, his back is completely fine, and he can flip as many times as he can without difficulty. He also never thinks about the possible ramifications of returning to the land of stuntwork, while his last stunt almost killed him, which is weird considering that Leitch and Pearce make it very clear that he’s leaving his past life behind for a justifiable reason.
Beyond the opening montage and the accident scene that supposedly sets the tone for how dangerous the profession is, Leitch doesn’t seem as enthused as crafting a true love letter to stunt professionals, which would’ve highlighted both the adrenaline rush and dangers of the profession in far greater detail than doing a traditional action romantic comedy.
Instead, The Fall Guy is too busy taking endless detours by continuously contriving its main story with one ridiculously inert (and predictable) twist after the next and jokes that always overstay their welcome. It’s particularly unnecessary to do all of this when the basis of the movie (a comedic actioner starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, also acting as a love letter to Leitch’s profession) works just fine on its own. There’s no need to stretch the movie out, especially when the talent behind and in front of the camera speaks for themselves and will naturally work to sell what could’ve been a simple story.
There is one fun – and completely unexpected – cameo near the end that might’ve made its elongated joke structure worthwhile and one fun nod to the original Fall Guy that no one who hasn’t watched the show will grasp, which showcases Leitch’s love to the original source material far more than his love for stunt professionals. There’s no denying he deeply respects the profession and has spoken about how difficult it is at great length during interviews, not only for this film but for his previous directorial efforts. He’s also made it clear that he wishes for a grander recognition beyond the feats of derring-do they accomplish in films and television series. He deliberately showcases it through brief shots of doubles performing Gosling’s stunts, either during several moments of The Fall Guy’s action scenes or through its end credits B-roll. But a better, simpler story – with fewer detours – would’ve served this message far better than what we ultimately got.
