A romantic comedy thriller about the world of stunt men? It works. Writer Drew Pearce based it loosely on the 1970s TV series of the same name, with Lee Majors, and Leitch was himself formerly a stunt man. Thus in the last half, the plot gives way somewhat to the action, though it is Gold Class action. And not a lot of CGI, either, as you can see - and the filmmaker want you to see - from the end credits showing a lot of the stunts taking place for real. There's CGI in it, for sure - that swoop over Sydney Harbour Bridge, for example, plus you're not actually going to set Ryan Gosling on fire, nor drop him onto a solid floor.
Ryan is in his excellent double take mode - but he's less deadpan than The Nice Guys) - here he's more emotional. And Emily Blunt is a good foil as the - get this - camera-operator-become-director (the plot doesn't stand up to deep scrutiny - who cares?) And Hannah Waddingham is fabulous as the film producer.
With Aaron Taylor-Johnson (bad actor), Stephanie Hsu (The MMM), Winston Duke (Black Panther), Teresa Palmer.
And lots of nice twisting, introduced early on when a script writing suggestion is to make something in the third act refer to itself and is rejected for being too 'meta', but that's kinda what happens, as for example a blue screen car sequence becomes a real car sequence, the fake props, and so on.
The setting - in some mad big budget alien movie - makes it funnier.
It was shot by Jonathan Sela and well edited by Elisabet Ronaldsdóttir, who doesn't just edit the action scenes well - though I do love that elaborate single take when Ryan comes on to the hotel set, flirts with Emily, then goes up in the lift and has that horrendous fall (Q tells me the star didn't enjoy this in real life).
 |
| Good background jokes too |
No comments:
Post a Comment