David Leitch spent years as a stunt performer before he became a director, and The Fall Guy plays like an extended thank-you note to the profession that trained him, dressed up as a big glossy studio comedy. Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers with the same deadpan comic timing he brought to Barbie, equally willing to be the butt of the joke and the one delivering it, and the chemistry with Emily Blunt's director-under-pressure is the film's actual engine — their scenes together have the rhythm of old-fashioned screwball banter dropped into a movie built around cars flipping through the air.
The plot, a loose conspiracy involving a missing action star and some very bad people covering their tracks, is mostly an excuse to string together a handful of the biggest practical stunt sequences shot for a mainstream release in years, including a cannon roll that set a real world record. Leitch doesn't hide the stagecraft — the movie is openly, cheerfully in love with how these gags get built — and that transparency is part of the joke rather than a distraction from it.
A love letter to stunt work that never forgets to also just be a good time.
It runs a little long for a movie this breezy, and the mystery plot is the least interesting thing happening on screen next to Gosling and Blunt just talking to each other, but The Fall Guy is a rare modern studio comedy willing to be goofy without hedging it with irony. It wants you to have a good time and it's not shy about it.
The Fall Guy is loosely inspired by the 1981–86 television series of the same name starring Lee Majors, though the film's plot is an original story rather than a direct adaptation. It was directed by David Leitch, a former stunt performer and co-founder of stunt-driven action films like Bullet Train and Atomic Blonde, and produced through his 87North Productions alongside Universal Pictures. The production employed extensive practical stunt work, including a sequence that set a Guinness World Record for the most cannon rolls performed in a car — 8½ rolls — performed by stunt coordinator Logan Holladay's team. It runs 126 minutes and stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
The film opened in May 2024 to strong reviews but a disappointing box office against its roughly $130 million budget, becoming one of the more discussed underperformers of that summer despite largely positive critical reception and audience scores. Industry commentary afterward focused heavily on marketing and scheduling as explanations rather than quality, and the film found a stronger afterlife in home streaming. It was also notable as one of the few recent studio releases built explicitly around honoring stunt performers, a profession the Academy Awards still does not recognize with its own competitive category, a point Leitch and Gosling raised repeatedly during the film's press tour.
That advocacy turned out to have real consequences: in 2025, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it would introduce a competitive Oscar for Best Stunt Design, debuting at the 100th Academy Awards for films released in 2027. Leitch led the push alongside stunt coordinator Chris O'Hara, building on momentum that grew directly out of The Fall Guy's press tour, where Leitch and Gosling kept pointing out that stunt work had never had its own category. Before that announcement, only two stunt professionals, Yakima Canutt in 1966 and Hal Needham in 2012, had ever received an Oscar, and both were honorary rather than competitive awards. It's a rare case of a movie's message actually moving the institution it was needling.
