He’s just – no, not Ken, but Colt Seavers. Ryan Gosling, Hollywood’s hottest protein beefcake at the moment, plays the title role in the cinema remake of the classic evening series “A Gun for All Cases”, which has been announced for many, many years and is, at least in Germany, due to the lack of the German series title (in English, the series and remake are called identically ) is hardly recognizable as such. What’s somewhat surprising from a marketing point of view: For people who, like me, grew up with West German television in the eighties (and didn’t have parents with the usual reservations of the time – Americanization, depictions of violence, shallow entertainment, etc.), “A Colt for All Cases” was definitely a generation-forming moment that continues to this day (especially in… Opening song) provides pleasant, if diffuse, memories (although one is probably well advised to protect this pleasantness from a re-encounter with the source material). I still remember the shirtless, proletarian humor of the series from my own memory, Wikipedia tells me the rest of my West German media childhood: “Colt Seavers lives in Los Angeles and is a full-time stuntman. Since he cannot make a living from this activity alone, he works He moonlights as a bounty hunter for a company that provides bail for defendants, and recaptures them for a reward if they fail to show up for their court dates.”
Of course, there is almost nothing left of this premise in the movie “The Fall Guy”, except that a stuntman named Colt Seavers gets into legally relevant turbulence under adverse circumstances: after the main actor (on the one hand, it is easily recognizable as a satire of “Dune”), but also When a science fiction blockbuster called “Metalstorm” (designed as a homage to Hal Needham’s “MegaForce”) disappears during filming, his double Colt Seavers is supposed to track him down again. During the course of the search, Colt becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, including being framed for murder.
Not only does the script portray Seavers (perhaps also in the wake of Gosling’s “Barbie” role as Ken) as a gentle idiot with lovesickness (the fact that the past love interest is the director of “Metalstorm” played by Emily Blunt doesn’t make it any easier) , removes the film from the historical source material. The tone is also different: at the beginning, the cinematic Seavers breaks his back in an extremely unsuccessful stunt (but the film staged it quite successfully in a breathtakingly complex planned sequence) and turns out again and again as the film progresses to be someone who was chosen by fate throws it into the world rather than taking it into his own hands.
Stuntmen are the proletarians of the film industry, as Quentin Tarantino’s very beautiful “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” recently reminded us: condemned to anonymity and rarely really well paid, they literally drag their bodies as day laborers to act, direct and to let the film shine. On the red carpet, no one is interested in the injuries that stuntmen heal in private anymore. Especially in the first quarter of the film, “The Fall Guy” sets appropriate notes and peaks. No surprise, because director David M. Leitch used to be a stuntman and stunt coordinator before switching to directing with “John Wick” in 2014. “The Fall Guy” may have been a matter close to his heart. This perhaps also explains why the film tries to pay homage to another stuntman film in film history, particularly with its motif of the severely physically battered stuntman and in the film’s showdown with an obvious stunt quote: Hal Needham’s great “Hooper” from 1978 with Burt Reynolds. Which is fitting since Needham, like Leitch, had worked his way up from the stunt business to the director’s chair (while Tarantino was inspired by the dynamic between Needham and Reynolds, whose double Needham used to be, for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”).
As a matter of the heart, however, the film is strangely mixed, perhaps because too many interests of too different people had to be covered with a say: “The Fall Guy” falls from one ticked-off bullet point to the next and is never quite sure what he actually wants to be . Spoof? Homage? And if so: to what and to whom? Action comedy with a romantic film? Romance film with comedy action? Hollywood satire? Action banger? Paranoia thriller? Gosling vehicle? Farce? Masterfully staged fillet piece (the already mentioned planned sequence at the beginning)? Or is it just irrelevant hopping around? Meta nonsense? Preferably a little bit of everything, but nothing really – and please also have a cool popcorn cinema with a retro hard rock soundtrack to keep you in a good mood in the cinema. While Kiss’ “I Was Made For Loving You” just had a nice, accentuating appearance in Adam Wingard’s heartfelt nonsense blockbuster “Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire”, the song is so consistently killed in “The Fall Guy”. ridden and so pointlessly put into the film again and again that people would like to ban it completely from cinemas for at least ten years.
A quarry of a film whose showdown conveniently takes place in a Joe D’Amato memory sand pit, the film at least throws off a few amusing moments suitable for YouTube snacks (Gosling, for example, blames drug-induced ones in the middle of the paranoia action thriller plot Hallus – keyword: “There’s a horse standing in the hallway”), but it’s incredibly annoying with its broad meta-smart jokes that are okay as a gag at first, but miss the moment to take off. For example, when Seavers and Moreno, as quarreling ex-lovers, have their screwball discussions on the set over the megaphone in front of the assembled crew, coded as supposed discussions about the emotional dynamics and constellations of the science fiction stupid buster that is currently being filmed. Or when a telephone dialogue breaks out about whether split screen is a suitable method for “Metalstorm” – and then “The Fall Guy” shows the two of them in split screen and performs various endless faxes as if it were the case, split screen master Brian de Palma to kill by homage.
What all this has to do with “A Colt for all occasions” is unclear. In times when cinema is starving in the tight grip of “intellectual property” logic and franchise exploitation, this could almost be refreshing (spoiler: it’s not). At least the fans get to see the iconic car of the series in the form of a GMC Sierra Grande. The beloved title song of yore only plays in the end credits, unfortunately in a lame version (there are also impressions from the filming – again a homage to Hal Needham’s films). And Lee Majors, who once played Colt Seavers? There’s an old cop arresting someone in an in-between credits sequence, but unfortunately not the entire film.
Thomas Groh
The Fall Guy – USA 2024 – Director: David M. Leitch – Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu – Running time: 126 minutes.