As far as movies that acknowledge the importance of stuntmen (because no one thinks of this as a profession for stuntwomen, clearly), the only one of mainstream note—up until now—has been Death Proof (unfortunately for Drew Barrymore, The Stand In doesn’t qualify). The Quentin Tarantino-directed film that was part of 2007’s Grindhouse double feature (which commenced with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror), wherein Kurt Russell plays the part of Stuntman Mike (and there is actually some play for a stuntwoman in the form of Zoë Bell). Like David Leitch’s The Fall Guy, Death Proof delights in its cleverness and meta-ness, but in a way that isn’t, shall we say, quite as fun. Though Tarantino surely thought that “sweet revenge” ending was all the fun any audience could want. But screenwriter Drew Pearce seems to be aware that they want something more than “Tarantino cleverness”—they want some fucking Ryan Gosling “hey girl”-style romance peppered in. With a dash of Tom Cruise roasting thrown into the mix, too. And that’s exactly what they get.
Starting from the beginning, Gosling as Colt Seavers delivers on both ingredients, with one of the first scenes consisting of Colt being told that Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, making better movies than his wife at the moment), “the biggest action star on the planet,” wants to speak with him. The name alone is already a dead giveaway that this is a major troll on Cruise, who has often boasted about doing his own stunts. This includes declaring one of the bigger stunts in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (namely, driving a motorcycle off a roughly four-thousand-foot high structure) to be “far and away the most dangerous thing I’ve ever attempted.”
Cruise’s long-running insistence that he does all his own stunts was parodied as far back as the 2000 MTV Movie Awards, during which a segment centered on Cruise’s supposedly nonexistent stunt double was featured, with Ben Stiller playing “Tom Crooze,” the stuntman in question. Presented as a behind-the-scenes documentary, even John Woo appears in it to say, “Tom Cruise does most of his own stunts. So he doesn’t really need a stunt double. But we make good use of the other Tom Cruise.” Meanwhile, The Fall Guy makes good use of both Tom Cruise (jokes) and the actor that’s clearly based on him and his ego: Tom Ryder. What’s more, seeing as how Pearce is credited as coming up with the story for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (the fifth installment in the film series), the amount of Tom Cruise-related wisecracks feels particularly pointed. Almost like Pearce is putting him in his place for having such arrogance. To that point, we see what happens to Colt as a result of his own so-called hubris (that is, in Tom Ryder’s estimation, who never, never wants to be overshadowed—least of all by his stunt double).
Although Gosling has previously starred in movies heavy with action (including Drive), this is his first proper “Hollywood action movie” (even if action-comedy). One that, incidentally, pokes fun at the Hollywood action movie (complete with an over-bloated third act). And yes, it’s surprising that it took Gosling this long to become an action hero (in lieu of his usual anti-hero) considering this was the boy compelled to bring steak knives to school and throw them at classmates thanks to inspiration from First Blood. The sense of homage in general to action movies past is a constant presence in The Fall Guy as well, whether including scenes of famous stunts from classic movies, mentioning that stunt work doesn’t qualify for having an Oscar category despite being the backbone of most major films or simply quoting action movies in general. This last form of reverence for the stuntman being an ongoing bit between Colt and his friend/stunt coordinator, Dan Tucker (Winston Duke).
Indeed, the first thing Dan quotes to Colt is Rambo—specifically, “It’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” This is meant to serve as motivation for conquering his fear of getting back in the proverbial saddle for “stunting.” For, by this point in the movie, the audience has been flashed with the title card “18 Months Later.” As in: eighteen months after Colt embodied the literal meaning of being a fall guy by plummeting from a twelve-story building and botching the stunt by landing right on his back. Moments after the fall, viewers see him being rushed to the hospital on a gurney as he gives the crew his customary “stuntman’s thumbs up” to indicate he’s fine.
But, of course, he’s not fine at all. No longer a stuntman, but an emotionally stunted man who has lost all sense of identity in the wake of realizing, in a very humiliating way, that he’s not invincible at all. The shame of the incident prompts him to cut off all communication with everyone he knew from that part of his life, even Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt, coming for Emma Stone in terms of onscreen chemistry with Gosling). The camera operator with directorial ambitions who became as sweet on Colt as he is on her over the course of working on many film productions together.
Having descended into the depths of “normalcy” after hanging up his kneepads, Colt has become a valet at a restaurant called El Cacatúa del Capitán (and yes, later a cockatoo will figure into the plot, along with an attack dog named Jean-Claude who only responds to commands given to him in French). It is Tom Ryder’s go-to producer, Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), that manages to track Colt down and call his new phone number to lure him to the set of a movie Ryder is currently working on called Metalstorm (something that looks a lot like a sendup of Dune, and even Edge of Tomorrow…an action-alien movie that Emily Blunt co-starred in with, you guessed it, Tom Cruise).
The project is already (down) underway in, where else, Sydney (a place that must be offering a lot of tax breaks lately if we’re to go by the recent rash of films shot there, such as The Invisible Man, Thor: Love and Thunder and Anyone But You). Although Colt is initially quick to rebuff Gail’s request to come and assist her with keeping Tom in line, he can’t help but respond positively to the dangled carrot (or “sexy bacon,” in this case) of her insistence that Jody, who has been hired as the director, expressly asked for him to be the stuntman.
Seeing an opportunity to right the wrong he did by ghosting her, Colt hops on the next plane, greeted promptly by facial scans from the set’s resident “effects person,” Venti Kushner (Zara Michales). When Colt asks why there’s suddenly all these bells and whistles, Venti informs him that they’re taking the scans so they can seamlessly computer-generate Tom’s face onto Colt’s face for any stunt scenes. Colt replies, “Like a deepfake situation? If you get a chance, turn me into Tom Cruise.” Oh my, Leitch and Pearce are really overestimating Cruise’s sense of humor about this sort of thing. An actor whose ego has steadily ballooned since he started out in the 80s, the decade when the TV series, The Fall Guy, originally aired. Because, yes, of course, it’s a movie based on a TV show (as LL Cool J once meta-ly complained at the beginning of Charlie’s Angels upon seeing the opening credits for T. J. Hooker: The Movie, “Another movie from an old TV show”).
This is something that Leitch and Pearce give a nod to via a post-credits scene focused on two cops played by Lee Majors and Heather Thomas (a.k.a. the stars of The Fall Guy). In the series, Lee Majors’ Colt is also a bounty hunter on the side (which is where that element comes into play for the movie) and Thomas’ Jody is a fellow stuntwoman whose last name is the more anglicized Banks instead of Moreno (and no, there is nothing about Blunt that makes her look like a Moreno).
As for being “upgraded” to director in the movie version, Jody is also given the chance to shine as a singer, with a lengthy karaoke scene providing her with the occasion to belt out Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds” (granted, Mariah Carey delivers a possibly superior cover on Rainbow). Blunt kept right on singing for her cameo in Gosling’s monologue on SNL, during which the two duetted a parody version of Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” (a song that features prominently in the movie). In their version of the song, they explore letting go of the characters that made them part of two of the biggest blockbusters of Summer 2023, Barbie and Oppenheimer (so yes, Barbenheimer did manage to reanimate in 2024 by way of Blunt and Gosling working together).
In something of a missed opportunity, SNL didn’t opt to include a sketch of Gosling as a stuntman. But that’s fine, one supposes, for Gosling is no stranger to playing a serious stunt performer instead, having also done so in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines (the set where he and Eva Mendes would translate their onscreen romance into an offscreen one). What’s more, it probably would have been too much for Gosling to play Tom Cruise in one of the sketches (for whatever reason, choosing to play Beavis was more important). Because even in the promo interviews for The Fall Guy, Gosling and Blunt still find time to rib Cruise. Case in point, when Gosling admits to IMDb, “I have a fear of heights,” Blunt replies, “Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t have a fear of heights?” “Tom Cruise,” Gosling says without missing a beat. But, for the most part, the duo keeps the focus of their interviews on having a deep respect and appreciation for what stunt people do. “It’s a love letter to the stunt community,” Gosling reiterates in an interview for MTV. Blunt adds, “They risk their souls, their bodies, their lives for us to make us look cool.” Gosling then concludes, “They risk more than anyone… You can’t separate the history of film [from] the history of stunts.”
History that continues to be made with The Fall Guy, which just secured an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for showcasing the most cannon rolls (eight and a half) ever performed in a film (executed by stunt driver Logan Holladay). It also happens to be the kind of laugh-a-minute film not seen since The Lost City (a movie that Argylle attempted to heavily emulate with less success). And that’s hard for someone like Tarantino, the only other person with as much well-documented “love” for stuntmen, to compete with, even when he also paid homage to the stunt community in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood via Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). A character who, in addition to Stuntman Mike, doesn’t exactly make for the best representation of the “average” stuntman.
Funnily enough, Leitch would also enlist Pitt for the lead in Bullet Train, a far less intelligent (read: not intelligent at all) action movie than what the director has on offer here. Thus, whatever “bad mojo” he was suffering from in 2022 (*cough cough* a bad script), he seems to have recovered from it as nicely as Colt Seavers after his massive, back-breaking fall…with more than just a little help from Pearce and a leading man as charismatic as Gosling and his “tousled just so” coif.
