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5/18/2024 0 Comments the fall guy The Fall Guy is exactly the sort of movie - a breezy slice of summer escapism, turbocharged by genuine movie star chemistry - that people claim to be ravenous for, yet rarely seem to turn out in support of. Although nominally based on the 80s TV series (in which Lee Majors played a Hollywood stunt man who moonlights as a bounty hunter), the film is effectively free of any IP shackles; it’s a liberating burst of original moviemaking, lively and nimble-footed, infused with rom-com DNA and a zesty sense of spectacle… one should breathe its cleansing, oxygenated qualities deep into the lungs.
Ryan Gosling stars as Colt Seavers, stunt man extraordinaire, who enjoys a steady gig doubling pampered movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). However, a stunt-gone-wrong results in a fractured spine and - 18 months later - Colt has washed out of the industry, reduced to a humble life of parking cars. That presumably would be where the story concludes, only Colt receives a call from high-strung producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso), urging him to fly to Sydney, where Tom’s latest production - the sci-fi blockbuster Metalstorm - is in full swing. Tom, it seems, has gotten mixed up with some shady characters down under and appears to have gone missing… Gail wants Colt to track him down. “I don’t know why I’m talking so much,” Colt admits, in voice-over, as he prepares to get on a plane. “I’m not the hero of the story. I’m just a stunt man.” The setup is, admittedly, a bit muddy. Why is Tom’s former stunt double considered uniquely qualified to play amateur sleuth? Who knows. But once the ball gets rolling, the plot generates real kinetic momentum. Besides, the real reason Colt agreed to jet halfway across the world is the fact that Metalstorm’s director happens to be his ex-girlfriend Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), a former camera operator who he ghosted following his accident. Anyone with even a modest interest in the alchemy of on-screen chemistry would be wise to study this movie - the sparks Gosling and Blunt strike could ignite the theater’s carpeting if one isn’t mindful. It’s not altogether surprising. Gosling’s particular brand of laid-back cool has always meshed with that particular hint of class that comes with being British; the fact that both stars are blessed with legitimate comedic chops is a sizable bonus. Gosling is such a good performer, he’s able to maintain an air of self-aware charm even when he’s being emotionally vulnerable. Some seem disappointed that he’s retreated from the edge of his Nicolas Winding Refn collaborations for such squarely mainstream fare (The Gray Man, if we’re being honest, was the more demoralizing pivot), but he has the smooth adaptability of a true movie star - the sort whose mere presence makes something worth watching. The Fall Guy was directed by David Leitch who, like Colt, began life as a stunt man. He and Chad Stahelski segued into filmmaking with John Wick (though only Stahelski was ultimately credited) and their career divergence has been fascinating. Stahelski dedicated the next decade of his career entirely to the Wick franchise, raising the bar in terms of craft and overall quality with each subsequent entry, while Leitch helmed a bunch of successful studio blockbusters (Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw, Bullet Train) that did comparatively little for his reputation. There is something lacking in personal style - even a sequence as technically audacious as Atomic Blonde’s one-shot apartment complex/stairwell brawl has a certain bruising yet mechanical detachment. The Fall Guy, not surprisingly, was conceived as a valentine to stunt performers and the intricate practicality of the set pieces is impressive (at one point Colt surfs the streets of Sydney on a slab of metal that showers sparks as part of a high-speed garbage truck chase)… but even then, Leitch can’t help but revert to the comfort of jittery editing with a glossy mainstream sheen. Nonetheless, there’s a level of infectious fun on display here that can’t really be faked (particularly in comparison to a film like Bullet Train, which strains as if in childbirth to maintain its facade of manic exuberance). In spite of the initial narrative speed bumps, the story comes together smartly… riffing slyly on the title’s built-in dual meaning. But the plot is almost secondary to the movie’s core appeal, which is that a stunt man is a natural action hero, given his body’s preconditioning to absorb a perpetual pummeling. Suffice it to say, Colt takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ - Gosling wearing the accumulated nicks and scrapes and contusions impressively well. But the movie is just as engaging when Colt and Jody are thrust together like a couple of magnets, attracting yet repelling one another (there’s a great sequence in which the two of them litigate the fallout of their breakup in front of the crew as Colt is set on fire and hurled against a rock face take after take after take). Blunt is the rare sort of talent whose latest performance always feels like the thing she should be unquestionably dedicating the rest of her career to (in this case screwball rom-coms, but one remembers a movie like Edge of Tomorrow, in which she immediately felt like the next great action heroine). The Fall Guy isn’t a substantial work of entertainment (we could talk about the fact that Jody is supposed to be a natural born director, but Metalstorm is quite obviously a piece of crap), but that’s part of the film’s specific, first-weekend-of-May appeal. It’s caffeinated cinema, designed to flood your bloodstream with a temporary sucrose high… sit back and enjoy the rush.
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5/9/2024 0 Comments Civil war Given the largely moronic tenor of most cinematic discourse on social media these days, a film like Civil War is basically the equivalent of writer/director Alex Garland carelessly tossing a lit match over his shoulder as he walks away from hemorrhaging gasoline pumps. The only saving grace is that Garland is so disinterested in ideology, and so deliberate in his attempts to obfuscate any sort of political agenda, that the subject matter’s caustic fumes feel deprived of oxygen; the hyperbolic fallout can’t fully flower when people can’t even articulate why they should or shouldn’t feel either validated or offended.
Civil War grapples with its titular conflict in a dystopian alternate reality and speculative fiction framework that many would argue isn’t all that alternate or speculative (the setup is just credible enough to incite mild perturbation… or maybe just a twinge of indigestion). The unnamed US President (Nick Offerman) gives off a faint whiff of MAGA authoritarianism (he’s supposedly in his third term), while Texas and California have somewhat incredulously joined forces in opposition… beyond that, the background lore is little more than an inscrutable haze. Garland is far more interested in focusing his attention on the nation’s war correspondent ecosystem - specifically photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and her partner-in-crime Joel (Wagner Moura). Lee wears the hardened expression of someone whose facial muscles would require an electrical jolt to form a smile, while Joel plays the devil-may-care jester as an obvious coping mechanism. The two of them are heading into Washington DC - the “belly of the beast” - to try and finagle an improbable interview with the White House (regarded within their circles as a glorified suicide mission - the press aren’t exactly welcome in the Capitol). Along for the ride are Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a New York Times scribe who’s gotten too old for this perilous racket but doesn’t really know how to do anything else, and wet-behind-her-ears cub Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), who Lee reluctantly takes under her wing. Civil War is, at heart, an episodic road trip movie… and some of those episodes pack a legitimate punch. Not surprisingly, everyone has been talking about Jesse Plemons (he throws at such consistently high heat these days, his mere presence is like cinematic adrenaline), who appears briefly as a chilling sociopath in strawberry sunglasses, armed with an assault rifle and spewing white nationalist rhetoric in an emotionless affect (some have pointed to his character as evidence of the film’s politics, but acknowledging that a) white nationalists exist and b) they’re generally bad barely constitutes a stance… it’s like claiming Indiana Jones is political because he punches out Nazis). But the pieces don’t necessarily gel into a more cohesive whole. Garland seems fixated on the ethical repercussions of war journalism - of prioritizing impartiality in the face of atrocity - which is compelling subject matter… it’s also a theme filmmakers have been grappling with for literally decades, dating back to 80s dramas such as Salvador, The Killing Fields, and The Year of Living Dangerously. It’s a peculiar angle for Garland to gravitate towards - especially given he has no particularly fresh insights in spite of the unconventional backdrop - so it’s a good thing he at least picked his four leads with such care. Spaeny - who popped off the screen as a teenager in Pacific Rim: Uprising and was heartbreakingly good in Mare of Easttown - feels like she’s inching ever closer to stardom. She’s 25, but her age feels entirely fluid - within her relatively small body of work, she’s shown an astounding ability to appear significantly younger - or more mature - than her years. She partners effectively with Dunst, who no longer has the photogenic glow of her teenage stardom, but wears her current age extremely well. Her features have a certain lived-in gravity about them now… and it’s her hollow stare that so often holds the center of the frame in its cool grip. She’s never been more intriguing as an actress. As a filmmaker, Garland is an imperfect purveyor of ambitious originality (most regard the 2014 techno thriller Ex Machina as his magnum opus, but I always gravitated more towards Annihilation, his unnerving 2018 descent into hallucinatory sci-fi-flavored madness). He produces imagery - particularly in the third act - that one can’t help but find queasily affecting… helicopters swooping over the smoldering ruins of the Lincoln Memorial, a Special Forces squad turning the corridors of the White House into a bullet-riddled Call of Duty set piece. The sound design is stunning, the gunfire like a percussive symphony played on your eardrums. At its best, this is genuinely intense moviemaking - a reminder why Garland has amassed such a fiercely loyal following. But the film keeps you firmly, frustratingly at arm’s length. One can hardly fault Garland’s reluctance to tread the sort of knee-jerk path that inevitably foments a discursive trash fire. But there’s something almost cowardly in the way the film capitalizes on an inflammatory hook while refusing to truly engage with America’s cultural currents. Many have described the film as frightening, but that feels more like projection. This Civil War is little more than the stuff of illogical fantasy, its audacity deprived of any real focal point. Garland’s refusal to take sides feels like a miscalculation at best and vexingly cynical at worst. He’s made an incendiary device of a movie that ultimately smolders harmlessly. It's disappointing. To pseudo-quote Alexander Hamilton (or to simply quote the movie Sucker Punch) “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” |
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