The Fall Guy

David Leitch makes stunt work not just his subject but visible, holding it in wide shots that refuse to cut away. In Sydney, Ryan Gosling’s driving double Logan Holladay rolled a Jeep Grand Cherokee eight and a half times. Guinness World Records certified it as the most rolls in a car; the previous mark was Adam Kirley’s seven on Casino Royale. Troy Lindsay Brown took the backwards fall from the helicopter onto the same airbag his father Bob Brown had used twenty years earlier on Flight of the Phoenix, then signed his name under his father’s. The Sydney Harbour Bridge was closed to daytime traffic for filming. The plot is a delivery system for all this. The Extended Cut, released digitally afterwards, adds 20 minutes, most of them in the final third. A mid credits scene hands the parts back: Lee Majors and Heather Thomas return as the television series’ Colt Seavers and Jody Banks. A good fit if you want the roll and the fall kept in shots open enough to count, and will sit through the credits for the scene that returns the parts to their original owners. Not for you if you expect the missing star mystery to tighten; it is a connector to the next stunt.