In The Fall Guy, Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers.

When we first meet Colt, he’s a legendary and rather cocky stuntman.  While movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) takes all the credit and brags about doing his own stunts, Colt is the one who is actually jumping off of buildings and surviving car crashes.  Every day, Colt risks his life to make Tom look good and, even though Tom is a bit of a tool, Colt loves every minute of it.  Why shouldn’t he?  He’s good at his job and he’s in love with aspiring director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt).

Or, at least, that’s case until one stunt goes mysteriously wrong and Colt ends up breaking his back.  Colt eventually recovers but he’s no longer willing to be a stuntman and he and Jody break up.  Colt ends up working as a parking valet in Los Angeles, retrieving cars and hoping that no one recognizes him.

When Colt gets a call from producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) asking him to fly down to Australia and once again act as Tom’s stunt double in a science fiction epic called Metalstorm, Colt refuses.  But then Gail tells him that Jody is directing the film and the production is running behind schedule.  Jody herself wants Colt to come work on the film.  Colt finally agrees.  However, when he arrives in  Australia, he discovers that Gail lied.  Jody definitely does not want Colt working on the movie and, in fact, Metalstorm is her way of getting out all of her negative feelings about their relationship.

Gail explains that Tom is missing.  Colt agrees to track him down while working on both the film and his relationship with Jody.  However, it soon turns out that Tom isn’t just off on a drunken binge somewhere.  Colt soon finds himself caught up in a murder investigation, one in which Colt himself is the top suspect!

I liked The Fall Guy a lot more than I thought I would.  From the trailer and the commercials, I was expecting it to just be another dumb Hollywood action film.  And, indeed, there is a lot of action in The Fall Guy.  Appropriately enough for a film about stuntmen, the stunts in The Fall Guy are often spectacular to watch and the film serves as a tribute to the unnamed stunt players who make us believe that film stars can do just about anything.  I’m not going to speculate about who Tom Ryder might have been based on but it’s easy to see him as a stand-in for any number of spoiled movie stars who get all the credit for what we see onscreen despite the fact that it’s usually their stunt doubles doing the thing that we really remember.  The Fall Guy is also a surprisingly funny movie.  It’s smart enough not take itself too seriously and there’s a bit with a unicorn that made me laugh out loud.  As always, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are charming and fun to watch.  I’ve been pretty critical of Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the past but I have to admit that he did a really good job as Tom.  The Fall Guy kept me entertained and there’s definitely something to be said for that.