Friday new releases: 26 April 2024

The Fall Guy, Robot Dreams and Before Dawn are in cinemas; Anselm is streaming on DocPlay

On 20 April, in Atlanta, there was an accident during the shoot for the forthcoming Amazon/MGM film The Pickup (which stars Eddie Murphy).

I heard about it from this story in Indiewire a couple of days ago, just as I was organising my tickets to The Fall Guy. The story tells us there is video of the accident and that video was published by the New York Times:

In the video (via NYT), you can see an armored truck pulling up alongside an SUV and then swerving into it, leading the cars to drive off the road and into grass. But the armored truck then rolls on top of the SUV, with both vehicles fully flipping before landing upright. The video concludes with a person’s body hanging limply out of the armored truck door.

I’m not going to link to the NYT story or to the video. I’m not a ghoul.

But it is a reminder that, despite all the laffs in The Fall Guy, stunties (and the crew that work around stunts) take serious risks by going to work every day.

Early on in the film, Gosling’s character (Colt Seavers) has turned up at the Sydney location, jet lagged and coffee-deprived, expected to do a dangerous stunt involving rolling a car several times on a beach.

“It’s the wrong sand,’ he says. It’s too soft and he won’t have the control he needs. He suggests waiting until early the next day when the outgoing tide will have compacted the sand and the whole thing will be much safer. (This seems like the kind of detail that director, and former stuntman himself, David Leitch, would know all about.)

But his stunt co-ordinator (Winston Duke) – bullied by the First AD (Adam Dunn) because they are losing the light – persuades him to go ahead anyway. It’s early in the film, Seavers is recovering from a broken back, and there’s a little bit of dread as the eighth barrel roll is completed, the car is destroyed, and we wait for that all-important thumbs up to emerge from the wreckage.

The Fall Guy is a fantasy, but it’s a fantasy that its makers would like us to think has some grounding in reality. Director Jody (Emily Blunt) would certainly have to believe that the dreadful science-fiction epic that she is shooting in front of the Sydney Opera House is great art, otherwise why would she bother? Producers are ruthless. Stars are egotistical and not very bright. Personal assistants are ambitious.

And stunts make the world go round, even as they are being usurped by deep digital fakes and face replacement.

Seavers has been brought out of ignominious valet parking retirement to locate the Sydney whereabouts of the star he used to double for, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham from Ted Lasso) is worried that he is in with a bad crowd and that there may be drugs involved. First-time director – and Seaver’s ex – Jody must not know that her star is missing as she’s under too much pressure already.