Review of The Stuntman with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt

It’s been almost a year since Ryan Gosling elevated the character of Ken, who was neglected by everyone, in the movie Barbie. It’s hard to get the song I’m just Ken out of your head or his Mojo Dojo Casa House, full of everything you need in a man’s world – boxing gloves, mini fridges, horses and, of course, fur coats.

Gosling’s next project is different in many ways, but one thing remains: With his own energy, he shows off people whose job it is to stay in the background.

This time, he exchanged pastel colors for neon ones, horses for inflated cars and fur coats for the first jacket he received during the filming of the film, and he became a Stuntman. His job this time is to crash, jump from huge heights and let himself be set on fire until the director is satisfied with the shot. Just like during the actual filming.

Otherwise, the story of David Leitch’s new film is incredibly trivial and can be summed up in just two sentences: Colt Seavers, a previously successful stuntman, tries to return to his job after an accident and to his beloved girlfriend, cameraman and director Jody, whom he left because of an accident. But with all this, he has to be careful not to get arrested or killed.

Although it doesn’t really matter. The story is perhaps the least important thing about Kaskadér. The main task of the script is not to get in the way and to deliberately give space to hackneyed dialogues, jokes on the edge of embarrassment, cheap quoting from films like The Last of Mohican or Notting Hill and especially the acting performances of Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt or the dog Jean-Claude. And it works.

Action scenes alternate with melodramatic cuts to romantic songs by Taylor Swift, for example, and the two hours fly by like water. And this despite the fact that it is often hackneyed, a bit cheesy and quite possibly in some parts it all makes sense only thanks to the well-matched central pair of actors who fit each other as well as Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. How things will turn out with Colt and Jody is clear from the beginning. But again – it doesn’t really matter. This does not prevent the viewer from enjoying every moment in which the pair regains their trust in each other.

One almost forgets that – probably – he went to the cinema for an action blockbuster and not a romantic comedy. But he got both. Touching scenes alternate with those where even the best stuntmen could break every bone in their body. There are car chases, climbing multi-storey buildings, explosions, battles, a rubber tomahawk or real weapons – in short, everything that an action shooter deserves.

And in every shot you can see the clear imprint of David Leitch, who has been gaining a reputation in recent years as the man who is bringing back the action movie to Hollywood, but before that he worked as a stuntman for almost 20 years in films like Blade, Van Helsing or Tron: Legacy. And even though he has since been promoted to the director’s chair, his love for action has remained. Viewers saw it on the second Deadpool, one of the Fast and Furious sequels or the action comedy Bullet Train. But this time, Leitch goes even further and sends an imaginary “love letter” to all the stuntmen of the world.

From every scene where Colt Seavers isn’t trying to win back Jody’s love, it’s clear that this film is meant to pay tribute to a profession that remains on the fringes of the limelight. This time, the battle on the truck is not just a means to retell the story, on the contrary, it plays prim. Every punch or kick is meant to remind the viewer what stuntmen are capable of and that they do their best work precisely at the moment when they are not visible.

And just in case the viewer didn’t notice it himself, David Leitch reminds him of it in one of the scenes, when the director Jody is happy that she doesn’t have a main star on the set, but a deserving stuntman. The action scene of her sci-fi film, in which the hero tries to break through the aliens, is said to be able to be shot in one take. And that’s also thanks to the fact that nowadays, of course, there’s no need to worry about the fact that someone might recognize the stuntman in the scene. After all, the actor’s face can be easily sprouted into the character – a nice dig at the sides of the use of artificial intelligence in the film and a reminder of last year’s strike in Hollywood.

In short, David Leitch, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt did it. And this despite the fact that the essence here is not the script or the duo of superstars from the posters, but exploding ships, gunfights, car chases and, above all, people, thanks to whom the viewer can see all this in the cinema. Those who stood in the background of the filming and made it to, say, the second minute of the closing credits, when only the most hardened are already sitting over the remains of popcorn in the cinema.

It is impossible to mention all the “nameless” protagonists, but this time it would be a bit remiss not to name Ben Jenkin, Justin Eaton, Logan Holladay and Troy Brown – Ryan Gosling’s stuntmen.

It is Ben Jenkin who is the daredevil who let himself be set on fire five times and flinched against a rock in a battle with aliens. Troy Brown is the one you see jumping almost 50 meters from a flying helicopter. Logan Holladay again flipped his car eight and a half times on the beach, breaking the Guinness Book of Records record. And Justin Eaton replaced Ryan Gosling in the fight scenes. The face of none of them was seen on the screen, but it was thanks to them that Gosling turned from blond Ken into an action hero. It’s nice to be reminded of that at least once in a while.

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