The Fall Guy: Spot the Australian landmarks in this Hollywood blockbuster
The Fall Guy was filmed in Sydney and it’s entertaining to see action movie hi jinx on our famous landmarks – not to mention the chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
If the British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson becomes the next James Bond, as the Hollywood rumour mill suggests, we know he has the looks. The action comedy The Fall Guy shows he also has the insouciance that’s part of the 007 armoury.
He’s action film superstar Tom Ryder, a name choice that spoofs Tom Cruise, who is mentioned several times in a movie that likes to pull its own leg. He’s making a sci-fi epic called Metalstorm. Unlike Cruise, he does not do his own stunts.
This brings in the lead, Ryan Gosling, who is veteran stuntman Colt Seavers. In a preliminary scene, he has a bad fall on the set of an earlier Ryder movie. Was it an accident is the obvious question.
He quits the business but, 18 months later, is lured out of retirement because his ex-girlfriend, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), is directing Metalstorm, in her feature debut. The first scene between director and stuntman is terrific. Gosling and Blunt have chemistry. However, things soon go awry. Ryder goes missing. With no star, there’s no film.
Colt is told to go find him.
“Save Jody’s movie,’’ says the almost certainly evil executive producer (Hannah Waddington from the television series Ted Lasso), “and maybe you get the love of our life back.” The director is American filmmaker David Leitch, who is a former stuntman. Like his previous film, Bullet Train (2022), starring Brad Pitt, there are a lot of sensational stunts and a humorous self-awareness of how improbable they are.
This movie was filmed in Sydney and it’s entertaining to see action movie hi jinx happening on the Harbour Bridge and around the Opera House. Most of the crew, including the stunt performers, are Australian.
The script is by British writer Drew Pearce, who draws on the 1980s television series of the same name starring Lee Majors as Colt. There are clever lines about how Hollywood makes movies. Every film, the producer says, even a nihilistic one about intergalactic warfare, needs some “sexy bacon”.
In a highlight moment, set in Ryder’s luxurious Sydney lodgings, Australian actor Teresa Palmer, as Ryder’s girlfriend, attacks Gosling with a samurai sword. He defends himself with a Golden Globe award.
It’s around this point that the double meaning of “fall guy” comes into play. This is a slickly written, directed and acted entertainment, nothing more or less. Be sure to wait for the special guest appearance at the end. It’s a prime piece of sexy bacon.
The Fall Guy (MA15+)
126 minutes
In cinemas from April 24
Eased into the unexpected
That film had a plot involving a theatre director and a multilingual adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. His new one does not, at least not for quite a while. That’s not a criticism. I found this movie in which nothing much happens for a long time oddly peaceful and ultimately thought-provoking.
The setting is a village, population 6000, not far out of Tokyo. The main character, Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) is a jack-of-all-trades. He appears to be a widower and has an eight-year-old daughter named Hana (Ryo Nishikawa).
Father and daughter know the names of all the trees in the woods near their home. They care about the deer, who are shot by hunters. Their pleasure in living a simple life bears similarities to Wim Wender’s remarkable Japanese language film, Perfect Days, which is in cinemas.
This bucolic contentment is shaken when a Tokyo firm announces plans to build a glamping – glamour camping – site near the village. Two executives arrive to brief the villagers.
This, I suppose, is the plot. The locals fear the spring waters will be sullied. There is a long discussion about a septic tank to be installed for the glampers. It’s all polite and respectful, on both sides. So this is fathoms apart from Erin Brockovich, Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 drama about water pollution. The cinematography (Yoshio Kitagawa) is beautiful, from the opening scene that pans through treetops to the close-ups of deer standing quietly as gunshots are heard. This film is a quiet love letter to mother nature.
As I watched I thought of Walden, Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book about living in the woods. I saw this film the day after seeing action comedy The Fall Guy, also reviewed today.
I found the change of pace relaxing. Until, that is, right near the end. Something does happen and it is utterly unexpected, difficult to understand or explain and more than a little weird. Then the film ends as it started, in silence.
Evil Does Not Exist (PG)
Japanese language with English subtitles
106 minutes
In cinemas
★★★