Before seeing this film, I read a few reviews that left me a bit perplexed. After seeing it, some of the complaints I've seen start to make sense while others seem wildly off the mark.
I left the cinema with the impression that the biggest problem with The Fall Guy is the draconically enforced runtime. I've seen reviewers complain that the movie does not know what it wants to be, action, romcom, or crime thriller, and I thought, why can't a movie be all of those? After seeing it, I realize the problem lies in the fact that the film does not have enough runtime to properly cover all the aforementioned aspects. The solution is NOT trying to be only one thing or get shoehorned into one genre, but to give it more runtime/breathing room so that it can blend all of those genres organically and congenially. Unfortunately, in today's world of vastly shortened and rapidly shortening attention spans, I imagine whoever cut this movie must be under immense pressure to make it as short as possible, and it's also very possible that the original cut was much longer, and then got repeatedly forced by executives or whoever to make the final cut shorter and shorter and shorter, until it was just bare-bones without any 'meat' left. Every scene felt massacred to the point that only the bare minimum was kept to ensure the audience can still follow the plot, and nothing else. But more often than not, it's everything else - the bells and whistles, the fluffs and frills, the throwaways lines, lingering glances, silences, non sequiturs, seemingly unexpected or inessential dialogues, the "Leave the gun, take the cannoli"s, that give a movie character and personality, and more importantly, they help flesh out characters, so that the audience can grow to care about them in the story. It's very possible that so much of The Fall Guy ends up on the cutting room floor that characters like the assistant Alma (Stephanie Hsu), producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham), and even female lead Jody (Emily Blunt) and main villain Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) felt severely underdeveloped. I sincerely wish they would release an extended version/director's cut or whatever they call it these days in the future, because I believe this movie would be greatly improved with more runtime, and more 'meat' to most of the scenes and characters. What's sad is that I've seen people complaining that the movie is too long, which is somewhat understandable, because everything that help build character/nurture style felt absent (probably cut) so of course the audience would end up bored and uninvested, thus wanting the movie to end quickly. But the solution is not to make it even shorter, but to give it enough time to properly build both the characters and the story!
That said, at the end of the day, despite a savagely reduced runtime, some of the heart and love woven into the fabric of the movie still shines through, and that's what saved the movie, and that's usually what makes a movie worth watching - that you can tell it was a labor of love, and that the creators (director, writers, actors, stunt performers, all the cast and crew etc.) put their heart in it. You'd think it would be hard to tell, but the audience can somehow always feel it, even when the execution might not be perfect, and the ways of expression can be meandering and weird. But this movie almost didn't make it, because soooo much of it must have been cut!!
But the weirdest and most amazing thing about this movie is that I originally wanted to rate it lower, but Ryan Gosling is so earnestly charming in it that I just can't, it's like kicking a puppy (or a gosling I guess)... So I caved. How come a guy I had absolutely nothing to do with can have so much of an effect on me by simply appearing in a movie is just beyond baffling... like, what sorcery is this?!
I left the cinema with the impression that the biggest problem with The Fall Guy is the draconically enforced runtime. I've seen reviewers complain that the movie does not know what it wants to be, action, romcom, or crime thriller, and I thought, why can't a movie be all of those? After seeing it, I realize the problem lies in the fact that the film does not have enough runtime to properly cover all the aforementioned aspects. The solution is NOT trying to be only one thing or get shoehorned into one genre, but to give it more runtime/breathing room so that it can blend all of those genres organically and congenially. Unfortunately, in today's world of vastly shortened and rapidly shortening attention spans, I imagine whoever cut this movie must be under immense pressure to make it as short as possible, and it's also very possible that the original cut was much longer, and then got repeatedly forced by executives or whoever to make the final cut shorter and shorter and shorter, until it was just bare-bones without any 'meat' left. Every scene felt massacred to the point that only the bare minimum was kept to ensure the audience can still follow the plot, and nothing else. But more often than not, it's everything else - the bells and whistles, the fluffs and frills, the throwaways lines, lingering glances, silences, non sequiturs, seemingly unexpected or inessential dialogues, the "Leave the gun, take the cannoli"s, that give a movie character and personality, and more importantly, they help flesh out characters, so that the audience can grow to care about them in the story. It's very possible that so much of The Fall Guy ends up on the cutting room floor that characters like the assistant Alma (Stephanie Hsu), producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham), and even female lead Jody (Emily Blunt) and main villain Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) felt severely underdeveloped. I sincerely wish they would release an extended version/director's cut or whatever they call it these days in the future, because I believe this movie would be greatly improved with more runtime, and more 'meat' to most of the scenes and characters. What's sad is that I've seen people complaining that the movie is too long, which is somewhat understandable, because everything that help build character/nurture style felt absent (probably cut) so of course the audience would end up bored and uninvested, thus wanting the movie to end quickly. But the solution is not to make it even shorter, but to give it enough time to properly build both the characters and the story!
That said, at the end of the day, despite a savagely reduced runtime, some of the heart and love woven into the fabric of the movie still shines through, and that's what saved the movie, and that's usually what makes a movie worth watching - that you can tell it was a labor of love, and that the creators (director, writers, actors, stunt performers, all the cast and crew etc.) put their heart in it. You'd think it would be hard to tell, but the audience can somehow always feel it, even when the execution might not be perfect, and the ways of expression can be meandering and weird. But this movie almost didn't make it, because soooo much of it must have been cut!!
But the weirdest and most amazing thing about this movie is that I originally wanted to rate it lower, but Ryan Gosling is so earnestly charming in it that I just can't, it's like kicking a puppy (or a gosling I guess)... So I caved. How come a guy I had absolutely nothing to do with can have so much of an effect on me by simply appearing in a movie is just beyond baffling... like, what sorcery is this?!