Review: “The fall guy” with Ryan Gosling is playfully funny.

The credits proudly announce that we have just seen the world record in “cannon rolls”: eight and a half pieces. It is information that leaves a car chase allergy sufferer like the undersigned completely unmoved. But okay, it takes timing, knowledge and money to make a car tumble around its own axle, and there is plenty of that in “The fall guy” – which is above all a loving tribute to the stunt profession. And a pamphlet for it to get its own Oscar category.

The character Colt Seavers, a stuntman who was drawn into various adventures, tumbled around the television screen in the 1980s in the long-running series “Stuntmannen”, and now he is back in one of the year’s most talked about and lavish blockbusters. A typical summer film a few months and many cold degrees too early. The new film adaptation has been in the works for ten years; Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage and many of the other big names were considered for the lead role, but in the end it was Ryan Gosling, who after the recent success in “Barbie” is now going from Ken doll to action figure.

Colt is one of the industry’s top, paid to take a beating but not seen, to perform the daredevil stunts the star doesn’t want/can’t do. He is with assistant director Jody (Emily Blunt) and life is playing – until that accident where he injures his back and withdraws from the profession, life and even love. It’s the latter that stings the most, so when 18 months later he gets the chance to act as a stuntman in Jody’s first feature film, he swings himself into the car seat again – and gets drawn into a Scooby Doo-style plot.

No, you shouldn’t buy a ticket to “The fall guy” for the intrigue, but that might not come as a surprise. Otherwise, it’s an unexpectedly successful genre mix, a rom-com on action steroids, full of subtle details and meta humor performed with an almost saloon-drunk playfulness.

David Leitch, once himself a stuntman for stars such as Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, is nowadays on the other side of the camera and with “Atomic blonde” and “Bullet train” has proven to be a reliable utility director. Here, he has put together a guaranteed audience-pulling update of the frankly quite moronic action comedy subgenre (which peaked in 1987 with “Lethal Weapon”), where people crack jokes while carrying out deadly violence.

of the film industry all the pistons beat in time in the well-oiled Hollywood machinery, but nothing else is to be expected with a monster budget of around one and a half billion kroner. I happily note that more time has been spent on rain of references and quick-witted dialogue than overturning vehicles, but then those ossified “nice” moments that, with their piano notes, are meant to raise the emotional stakes, make us care about the cardboard figures on the screen . It goes like that.

Well, it would be unintelligent to demand a vital EEG curve from a rom-com action, but it is entertaining without a doubt, two hours burn by at racing speed and there is a good chance that “The fall guy” will win the newly instituted next year’s Oscar category for Best Stunt.

See more. Three other films about stuntmen: “Stuntmannen” (1980), “Drive” (2011), “Once upon a time in Hollywood” (2019).

Read more film and television reviews in DN and other texts by Fredrik Sahlin.

The stuntmen are Hollywood’s last action heroes