The Fall Guy

According to the laws of entertainment cinema, Colt Seavers will survive, and now he will have to go through the “hero's path” — recover from a spinal fracture, bring back his beloved, help her make her directorial debut and find the very action star who went missing from nowhere. Colt, like Richard Aldana in “The Last Man” (read our text), wants to succeed on three fronts at once — internal, career and love.

At first glance, “The Fall Guy” — a simple film about a heroic lover with lots of problems, spectacular scenes and a detective line. The characters are raised on familiar archetypes, jokes and romance serve as the background for the action, and the visuals are devoid of the slightest complication. On his way, Colt will stumble and fall, run away and catch up, and sometimes burn alive. Literally and figuratively.

However, behind the facade of this cheerful and positive action movie lies a nervous drama — a production novel steeped in the fears of an entire community. The film's director David Leitch demonstrates an overview of the film industry and a selection of realistic situations from the filming of films that, as part of an action comedy movie, do not seem like horrors, but rather oddities.

But all the characters, from the main ones to the secondary ones, are afraid of something. Colt is worried that Jody won't forgive him and he'll be alone again. Jody is worried that her “Metalstorm”, which is also a reference to “Dune” and “Star Wars”, will fail at the box office. The disappeared action hero fears stuntmen who infringe on his masculinity.

The bossy producer is afraid of losing control over the creative process, so she wants to send the director “on vacation” and finish the film on his own. The screenwriter doubts that the third act is good enough and frantically rewrites it. And special effects artists are looking forward to an aspiring director becoming interested in naturalism and producing material that is difficult to schedule.

If we put aside our inner anxieties, we can see that two global fears hang over all the characters: the crisis of ideas in the film industry and deepfakes. They discuss the former out loud several times and even make awkward jokes about it, while the latter breaks the story at some point.

In a varied parade of pain and fear, the voices of stuntmen are heard more clearly than others. Representatives of Hollywood's most dangerous and most spectacular profession are not put into anything — they are infringed on and insulted, but they always use their services when they need to shoot a scene for another action movie. Let them burn, roll over in cars and fall from a height; that's their job.

Behind the thick haze of misconceptions, it's easy not to notice that these are not computer chatters with spectacular animations, but real people who risk their lives and sometimes die for the love of cinema or adrenaline addiction. Maybe they should be immortalized as a separate category at the Oscars? This is exactly the question that comes up throughout the movie.

David Leitch knows Hollywood's attitude towards stuntmen firsthand. In the 2000s, he performed stunts for Keanu Reeves in The “Matrix” and Brad Pitt in “Fight Club”. Later he became a second director, directed action scenes for other people's films and TV shows for a decade and a half, and only then shot the original “John Wick” co-authored by Chad Stahelsky.

After another decade, David Leitch decided to make a genre film about a sore point and reflected himself in Colt. In his reading, Hollywood is a rude, cruel and painful place, full of fears, neuroses and masks. Entire professions are on the margins, insolent stars “clean up” anyone who interferes with their ambitions with impunity, and producers manipulate authors and openly spoil their work.

Colt adds a touch of positivity to the dark nonsense throughout the film, even when he cries to a Taylor Swift song. True, the mutilated stuntman's fun looks so inappropriate that it borders on indifference to what is happening. No matter how hard Colt falls, he'll always show his thumb with his signature smile, which hides pain and fear. Thanks to this contrast, the picture is reminiscent of Slavoj Zizek's jokes — jokes are funny, but situations are scary.

“The Fall Guy” are reproached for its uneven pace and chaotic storytelling, although they boldly combine auteur and audience films. The attraction of spectacular scenes, plot twists and funny jokes repeatedly and without the slightest warning faces an unsettling reality, steeped in the almost panic tension of post-horror movies (read our text).