The 10 Wildest Stunts In The Fall Guy, Ranked
This article contains spoilers for "The Fall Guy."
At a pre-release screening, "The Fall Guy" director David Leitch and star Ryan Gosling greeted the audience by not only thanking them for attending (and playfully encouraging them to stay off their phones) but clarifying that the ensuing film — inspired by the 1980s TV series starring Lee Majors — is a love letter to the stunt community. That much would be true even if the film's end credits didn't include a lengthy montage of the making of some of the stunts that occur within the story. Leitch has a long history in the stunt community, having worked on everything from "John Wick" to "Deadpool 2" and "Ocean's Eleven." It's one thing, of course, to say that you've made a movie that's a love letter to stunts but it's another to actually pull off jaw-dropping stunt sequences. We've ranked the 10 wildest stunts in "The Fall Guy" to prove how impassioned this love letter of a film is, and why this film needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
10. The Hotel Jump
"The Fall Guy" spends most of its time on film sets. Lead character Colt Seavers (Gosling) is a longtime stunt performer whose current job is to be the stunt double for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), one of the biggest action stars in the world. The ins and outs of his latest film aren't too important; all we know from the pre-title opening is that Colt's been asked by Tom and his dedicated producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham) to do another take of a stunt in which he has to fall straight down from tens of stories inside an enclosed building. After a bit of flirtation with camera operator Jody (Emily Blunt), Colt does exactly that ... and all but breaks his back doing so, leaving the stunt community behind.
The end result may make you think this has to be a pretty wild stunt — if it's so dangerous that a man nearly dies, how could it not be? Leitch and cinematographer Jonathan Sela make this stunt particularly impressive because it all takes place at the climax of an elaborate oner, a single take that starts with us on the ground floor with Colt before he takes a long elevator flight up to his spot where he's safely hooked up to a rig that's meant to enable him to take the fall without getting badly hurt. And this stunt is pretty gnarly, though Leitch does cut away so that we don't actually see Colt get hurt. It's intense. But as "The Fall Guy" soon makes clear, this film has wilder stunts in mind.
9. The Sword Fight
18 months after his injury, Colt has forcibly removed himself from Hollywood, working as a valet at a random Mexican restaurant in Southern California and cutting ties with Jody just as they were in the middle of an impassioned romance. But Gail convinces him to travel to Sydney to work on Tom's latest film — mostly because Jody is making her directorial debut and he wants to reconnect with her. When Colt realizes Gail lied about Jody wanting him to return, he learns the real reason he's there: Tom has vanished and in lieu of calling the cops, Gail wants Colt to find him. His first stop is at Tom's swanky waterfront loft, where he's quickly greeted by lots of Post-It notes (a strange habit of Tom's) and his movie—star girlfriend Iggy (Teresa Palmer) wielding a terrifying sword and attacking him.
This stunt sequence, in which Iggy wildly attempts to stab Colt (before he realizes it's a prop weapon), is initially pretty crazy less because Colt's life is in mortal danger — it's barely 30 minutes in, and killing off Gosling would be ... y'know, impossible — and more because Iggy seems pretty unhinged. The "anything can happen" vibe of the stunt community is already made clear from Colt's accident and the idea of a star inadvertently hurting someone else simply because they don't understand proper safety precautions is equally clear from this fight, especially one wide shot in which Iggy's blade is only stopped by Colt throwing up a tablecloth in her way.
8. Getting Set on Fire
Before Colt goes into investigator mode, he's pretty eager to see Jody again and equally thrilled to see her looking as lovely and determined as ever. She, as noted above, is fairly infuriated that Colt is not only back on the set but that Gail went over her head to do so. She first realizes Colt is on the set of her film "Metalstorm," in which Tom plays a space cowboy who falls in love with an alien, after the conclusion of another stunt. (More on that stunt later.) To punish him by explaining how hurt she is wouldn't be quite enough, so Jody has Colt double a stunt scene in which the space cowboy is set on fire while fighting some aliens. And then she has him do it again. And again. And again.
This stunt is wild not just because it involves actual fire (though Colt is wearing a protective suit to ensure that he won't get burned), but because Jody knows exactly what she's doing by not only describing the plot of "Metalstorm" to Colt in a metaphor mirroring their relationship's rise and fall, but doing so while having the power to light him on fire a lot. (And she does it in front of the whole crew, many of whom either are aware of her past with Colt or quickly pick up on the metaphor.) Even though — as the end credits make clear — Gosling's own stunt doubles were being put through the fiery ringer here, it's still a funny way to make a stunt really burn for the audience.
7. A Pen is Mightier Than a Sword
Later in the film, Colt and Jody naturally make up and reconnect, (Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt have far too much innate charisma to have their almost insultingly good-looking and charming characters stay apart for too long) but that's in the midst of Colt not only discovering the dead body of a fellow stuntman, but realizing that Tom accidentally killed that stuntman and is now working with Gail to frame Colt for the murder. So as the third act approaches, Colt has to return to the set of "Metalstorm" incognito, putting on one of the alien costumes so that he can talk to Jody and try to work out a way to clear his name and bring Tom and Gail to justice. Though he sneaks into Jody's trailer, he does so in a way that prompts her to fear for her life ... and attack him, punching, kicking, and stabbing him in the leg with a pen.
Colt — being a professional stuntman — has a high threshold for pain, but even this stunt feels wild because you can just imagine exactly how hurt he must be. Eventually, Jody realizes the error of her ways, but it's only after we get to see Blunt acquit herself very well in a fight even if her character has to wound her love interest to do it. Colt takes it on the chin, unmasking himself and almost deliriously commenting that the ink poisoning probably hadn't set in by the time she yanked the pen out of his thigh. Even that sentence is painful to type, so this stunt really is pretty intense.
6. Drug-Induced Fight
Early in Colt's investigation, he's led to a neon-hued nightclub by Iggy, who gets him dressed up in some of Tom's duds so that he can blend in when meeting with a shady drug dealer. Though that drug dealer seems intense — with leopard-print tattoos on his scalp — he's also got a surprising depth of knowledge about film. (He even bemoans, with Colt, the fact that the Oscars don't have a stunts category. Get on it, Academy.) He admits he likes animation more, like the classic Disney film "Dumbo" with its hallucinatory "Pink Elephants on Parade" scene. And just as the baby elephant imagines pink elephants after being drugged, Colt soon hallucinates creatures of his own due to the drug dealer dosing him. But even then, Colt's able to handle himself in a fight against the dealer's cronies.
"The Fall Guy" has stunts that mostly take place in a facsimile of the real world — as noted above, so many of these stunts literally take place on film sets — but this fight scene is deliberately cartoonish. Colt doesn't go as far as seeing actual pink elephants (just a unicorn), but each time he punches or kicks an attacker, or throws bottle caps at them, it's accompanied by brightly colorful special effects. Even in this heightened scene, the stunts themselves are wild because Leitch and his team frame the shots clearly enough so you can feel each hit as if you were on the receiving end yourself.
5. The Cannon Roll
When Colt arrives in Sydney to the set of "Metalstorm," he knows just about nothing about the film, its context, or even where Tom is. All he wants is a cup of coffee and to check in with his old friend Dan (Winston Duke), who serves as the film's stunt coordinator. He's quickly conscripted into his first stunt of the shoot: a "cannon roll" in a vehicle on a sandy beach, as pyrotechnics explode on the sand. He hasn't yet had more than a passing glance at Jody and is grappling with his nerves not just at seeing her again but at doing an honest-to-goodness stunt again. (He complains to Dan that the sand is too dense, as a stalling tactic.)
But the "cannon roll," in which Colt can enable the vehicle he's driving to flip end over end, still goes off and fortunately without a hitch. In one of many jokes that seem to break the fourth wall ever so slightly, before doing the cannon roll, Colt accidentally drives close enough to the camera filming the grille of the car that he breaks the lens, and Jody's assistant director says they can keep going because there's seven other cameras filming. The roll itself is pretty impressive, even if the type of stunt is something we've seen in other action films. (These bits of stunt work call to mind — on purpose or not — George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road," with their colorful blend of explosives and desert-like color palette.) Jody's right to give Colt props later for making the car flip over eight-and-a-half times. Sometimes, the simplest stunts are the craziest.
4. A Pair of Jumps
And speaking of simple but crazy stunts, there's one more action sequence at Tom's apartment that not only pushes the story forward but features some impressive jumps and explosions in the realm of fistfights and jumps. Once Colt and Dan get their hands not only on Tom's phone but also on his password (written up in one of those Post-Its), they realize that the incriminating footage is of Tom murdering his stuntman by accident ... just as Tom's goons arrive to attack and get the phone back. After one of Tom's cronies shoots the phone out of Colt's hand (without realizing it), Colt tries to escape by jumping into the water outside the apartment, only to find Tom alive and well, and realize that he's being set up.
The apartment jump is only one of two wild stunts here — Colt is able to escape via boat but when he's cornered on the waterfront of Sydney Harbor, he pulls out a trick from his earliest stunt work in a "Miami Vice" stage show, revving the engine, sending the boat into the air, and jumping to safety as the boat explodes in midair. When Jody watches the footage later on, she realizes what Colt's up to, but from the outside in, it sure looks like he's been blown to bits. Defying death like that (and doing it on purpose) isn't just the core of being a stunt performer, but it makes gags like this even more jaw-dropping.
3. Thelma and Louise
The climax of "The Fall Guy" centers around two big stunts, only one of which is meant to happen in some form in "Metalstorm." The first is a 250-foot car jump, as the space cowboy is scripted to ride to victory by diving over a chasm in his tricked-out vehicle. Within the context of "The Fall Guy" itself, the car jump is engineered specifically by Colt, Jody, and Dan to tease out a confession from Tom, by getting the latter to do what he's bragged about for so long: performing his own stunts. (We've seen earlier evidence that Tom tends to ramble on between takes even though he's fully mic'd up.) After luring Tom into a vehicle under the guise of it being a blue-screen shot only, Colt reveals himself to the man who thought he'd offed him and compares their real jump to the ending of "Thelma and Louise."
The ensuing jump is a bit more successful for this pair than for the leads of that 1991 drama, although the stunt itself is still pretty hair-raising to watch unfold. The wildness here is a mix of the actual stunt — even if it's not Gosling and Taylor-Johnson in the vehicle, someone was taking that thing for a ride — and the commentary on the dangers of stunt work. Getting set on fire or doing a cannon roll is one thing, but driving a car over such a lengthy open space is a true leap of faith.
2. Jumping the Helicopter
Any Hollywood action film can't just have one big moment in its climax, so naturally, the car jump isn't quite enough. Yes, Jody and Colt get a confession out of Tom, and no, it's not officially entrapment. (As Colt snaps, Tom's the one wearing a wire.) But Gail and Tom make one last-ditch effort to escape, grabbing the footage of the confession and trying to leave via helicopter. Colt takes it upon himself, with Jody's assistance, to climb up a camera crane in motion and jump to the helicopter (with shades of Tom Cruise's helicopter stunts in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout") and stop the nefarious duo before they can leave for good.
Parts of this jump have been teased in the trailers for "The Fall Guy," which doesn't make the full stunt any less impressive. It's actually a two-part stunt, the latter of which is as close to standard practice on a movie set as possible: once Colt finally wrangles the footage away, he leaps off the helicopter onto a massive pad below. (The eagle-eyed viewer will note that the pad is branded with 87 North, the same production company created by Leitch.) The stunt work in that second part is less terrifying, though a fun mirror image of Colt's first stunt of the film. But watching a man jump onto a moving helicopter from another moving vehicle is gripping and thrilling, as the best stunts should be.
1. A Dumpster Fight
Midway through "The Fall Guy," Colt is waylaid from a true reconnection with Jody when he's attacked by Tom's goons (before he realizes the extent of Tom's crimes), who want his phone so they can destroy the footage of Tom killing his stunt double. As Jody indulges in some impassioned karaoke, singing to Phil Collins' "Against All Odds," Colt is first chasing and then getting into violent fistfights with those goons in a dumpster attached to a moving truck through the streets of Sydney. Even though there's a fair amount of wire work involved — as glimpsed in the end credits — this fight scene is as good as "The Fall Guy" gets.
It's not just the fun mix of fight and song, which allows the scene to feel almost musical in quality, as some of the best cinematic action sequences do. It's that Leitch and his team stage the stunts in an effective fashion, upending the typical centerpiece action scenes from genre fare just as Colt upends the dumpster itself, Tom's goons, Tom's assistant (Stephanie Hsu), and a dog that only responds to commands in French and likes to attack men in their crotches. The hyperactive blend of comedy, music, and action here – coupled with the sense that this stunt genuinely feels terrifying even with all the protection put in place — makes this the wildest of all.
"The Fall Guy" is now playing in theaters everywhere.