Nihilism is the sexy bacon.

Today’s movie is The Fall Guy because I’m trying to catch up on those films I told myself I’d watch and still haven’t. I’m also catching up on the latest Ryan Gosling movies because now that he’s in his blonde highlights phase he’s the kind of guy you’d want to lick condensed milk off his abs if you know what I mean. Wait, that wasn’t a metaphor at all. Do you think Ryan Gosling still shaves his legs since Barbie?

The Fall Guy is an action movie within an action movie, both commenting on its own meta while delivering it to the audience. Directed by David Leitch who has made some of my favorite films like Bullet Train and the original John Wick (co-directed with Chad Stahelski), The Fall Guy was also written by Drew Pearce who you may remember from his writing credits on Iron Man 3, HObbs & Shaw, and Rogue Nation. Does anyone remember the writing on those films?

Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stuntman who finds himself out of the game after a big accident on set. A little while down the road he gets called out to Australia to do one more stunt gig alongside the love of his life Jody (Emily Blunt) who is now creating her directorial debut Metalstorm. But there’s problems afoot when superstar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) goes missing mid-shoot and also producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham) is acting a little sus. Why did she bring Colt out on false pretenses? Is there murder afoot? You’ll have to watch to find out.

I love self-commentating meta movies, and The Fall Guy has that in spades. It’s pretty brilliant when you think about it. Since The Fall Guy is an action movie about shooting an action movie, you can have scenes where the audience can see the actor’s stunt riggings, where the cameras can be on screen, where the scenes are being played in slow motion without post-production, and it still looks cool. Granted, The Fall Guy has a lot of fantastic scenes with post-production and explosions and stunts and occasionally they’re not in the context of being the movie within the movie.

Which makes it all even better because it’s on the real-world side of the film. It also allows the characters to do some self-exposition. I loved the scene toward the beginning where Jody suggests adding a split-screen to the film and the actual movie goes split-screen while the two talk about the relationship of the characters in the movie while actually talking about their relationships in the real-world but in-movie world. There’s layers. In another part, Gosling yells at the bad guy for making his plot too complicated for the audience to follow.

The Fall Guy is a clear love letter to stuntmen and movie crews, giving itself a reason to show the sheer amount of work and team effort that goes into creating a hot action movie. And that’s just talking about Ryan Gosling’s hair. Hot stuff. Also the film has a fantastic soundtrack.

Rating: A