You might need to get your indulgent smile firmly in place for this colossal action comedy – not unlike the adorable smirks on the faces of its male and female leads, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, who play the daredevil movie stuntman and the stern director with whom he is in love. It’s a goofy summer crowd-pleaser (and you can never have too many of those) that is very far from the edgier and more satirical mien of Richard Rush’s 1980 movie The Stunt Man, in which a Vietnam draft evader hides out on a movie location, doing dangerous stunts in return for anonymity. Actually, this one is loosely inspired by a 1980s TV show, also called The Fall Guy, about a stuntman with a parallel career as a bounty hunter – starring Lee Majors, a legend who puts in a tongue-in-cheek cameo here along with his co-star, Heather Thomas.
Gosling plays seasoned stunt maestro Colt Seavers, utterly unafraid of any physical challenges, self-effacingly doubling for insufferably conceited star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who outrageously claims to do all his own stunts. Colt is having a passionate affair with beautiful, talented camera operator Jody Moreno (Blunt), but when he is involved in a catastrophic and career-ending failed stunt, he is overwhelmed with macho shame, thinking the accident was his fault because his infatuation with Jody made him take his eye off the ball.
