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Scott Mann ’s “Fall” belongs to the trapped horror subgenre of films like “ The Shallows ” and “ Open Water ,” but it takes a dynamic that usually unfolds in the middle of deep water to thousands of feet in the air. Mann and co-writer Jonathan Frank have a clever concept that results in a film that should be avoided by anyone with even the mildest vertigo—I wouldn’t say I’m particularly afraid of heights but there are some scenes that made my stomach turn a bit. You’ve been warned. Sadly, the concept only takes “Fall” so high, and the execution, including some ineffective acting, editing, and other technical choices, makes this a misfire. It doesn’t exactly crash to Earth as much as drift off into the forgettable air of film history.

Becky ( Grace Caroline Currey ), husband Dan ( Mason Gooding ), and Becky’s BFF Hunter ( Virginia Gardner ) are climbing a sheer mountain face in the opening scene when tragedy strikes and Dan plummets to the ground below. A year later, Becky is drowning her grief in a bottle, avoiding Hunter and her worried father James ( Jeffrey Dean Morgan , taking a part so small that it's like a favor to a friend). One day, Insta-star Hunter comes to Becky with a proposal: They’re going to climb an abandoned 2,000-foot TV tower that’s basically in the middle of nowhere, from which they will find closure and spread Dan’s ashes. Of course, it goes very wrong, leaving Becky and Hunter stranded on top of the tower with no way down and no way to communicate with anyone who might be able to save them.

Filmed in the Mojave Desert, the vast majority of “Fall” takes place on the tower, and the film admittedly gets some nice adrenaline from the initial climb and disastrous ladder collapse that follows. In fact, there’s a better version of the film that starts right with the climb, allowing the characters’ trauma to arise through their conversations on the way up instead of with a horrendous set-up act that’s filled with clichés and poor filmmaking (it also would have helped reduce the runtime on a 107-minute movie that should be closer to 87). When Becky and Hunter begin their actual ascent, Mann has his firmest grip on the movie, building tension in a way that can be pretty effective.

And then “Fall” stalls again. Hunter is given a secret that's more like melodrama than realism, vultures and drones get involved, and the movie gets increasingly silly through its final act. The best “trapped” films usually rely on realism, making viewers feel like they’re actually trapped in the rocky waves of a film like “Open Water,” and “Fall” crumbles under that analysis. Currey and Gardner give committed performances in physical terms—it looks like an exhausting production—but they’re saddled with juvenile dialogue that doesn’t capture the terror people would really feel in this situation. “Fall” only works if we believe the predicament in which Becky and Hunter are trapped, but the thin dialogue, showy cinematography, and overzealous edits betray the potential of this nightmare.

Ultimately, “Fall” has been designed to be seen on as a big a screen as possible, which is why Lionsgate is going wide with it this weekend instead of shuffling it off to VOD. Much has been written about getting ticket buyers back into theaters with event movies that demand the theatrical experience. It's too bad this effort to help keep the theater industry aloft will only let viewers down.

Now playing in theaters.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Fall (2022)

Rated PG-13 for bloody images, intense peril, and strong language.

107 minutes

Virginia Gardner as Hunter

Grace Caroline Currey as Becky

• Jonathan Frank

Cinematographer

• Robert Hall

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‘Fall’ Review: A Don’t-Look-Down Thriller That Will Have You Clutching Your Seat

Two women climb an abandoned TV tower in the desert, and we're with them every shivery step.

By Owen Gleiberman

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“ Fall ” is a very good “don’t look down” movie. It’s a fun, occasionally cheesy, but mostly ingeniously made thriller about two daredevil climbers, Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), who decide to scale the B67 TV tower — an abandoned 2,000-foot communication tower that juts up in the middle of the California desert. It’s based on an actual structure (the KXTV/KOVR Tower outside Sacramento), which is used like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the skyscraper that became the pedestal for Tom Cruise’s you-are-there stunt sequences in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.” And if, like me, you loved that movie in part because of how deviously it toyed with your fear of heights, “Fall” is likely to hit you as an irresistible piece of vertigo porn. It’s for anyone who ate up “Ghost Protocol,” as well as the awesome rock-climbing documentaries “Free Solo” and “The Dawn Wall,” and wants to continue that shivery vicarious high.

Critics, for some reason, now like to mock the visual sleight-of-hand that goes into a thriller like this one, as if the CGI involved were all too easy to see through. But in this case I couldn’t disagree more. “Fall” was shot in the Imax format in the Mojave Desert, and there are moments when I honestly don’t know how the director, Scott Mann , the cinematographer, MacGregor, and the two actors did it. Were they actually on a tower — and, if so, how high up? Were there stunt people, or was every bit of this brought off with computer trickery?

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The abandoned TV tower, like the KXTV/KOVR Tower, is, we’re told, the fourth highest structure in the U.S. It has a photogenic vermilion finish (imagine the Golden Gate Bridge as a rusty hypodermic needle), and it turns out to be the perfect setting for a movie about climbing into the sky. As the two women ascend, the desert below looks like something viewed from an airplane. The trick is that the elements of the image are all visually united: tower, horizon, climbers. Without a cut, the film will glide from close-ups to vertically angled drops to death-defying panoramas; the light and shadow are always just right. You know how it feels when you watch an old movie with rear projection that’s laughably fake? “Fall,” by contrast, represents a totally credible and innovative use of CGI. Watching the movie, we believe our eyes and, therefore, our raised pulses.

The two women have agreed to make this climb as a way to wrest Becky out of her funk. In the film’s opening sequence, we see the two ascending a vertical rock face along with Becky’s husband, Dan (Mason Gooding), who winds up plunging to his death. A year passes, and Becky can’t let go — of him, or of the anxiety that has calcified around the tragedy. Facing her fear, scaling that TV tower along with her best friend (they plan to scatter Dan’s ashes when they get to the top), is the only thing that will purge the demon.

As terrifyingly tall as the tower is, it doesn’t strike us as something that would offer that much of a challenge to highly experienced climbers. There’s a ladder on the inside of the caged needle that goes up for 1,800 feet. For the remaining 200 feet, the ladder is outside the structure. I wouldn’t want to climb 30 feet of it, but these two aren’t scared of heights, and the feat they’ve laid out for themselves looks a hell of a lot easier than shimmying over the smooth plunging rock faces they’re used to. That’s why they succeed pretty quickly. Half an hour into the movie, they’ve ascended to the small circular platform up top.

But along the way the whole structure has been quivering, with telltale shots of a nut or a bolt coming undone here and there. It’s the outside ladder that’s getting loose, and as they take the last steps, a chunk of it falls out from under them, the weight of that chunk pulling the rest of the ladder down with it. Just like that, they’re stranded. The cylindrical pole that’s left is too smooth to climb down. The rope they have isn’t long enough. And though they’ve got their phones, they’re up too high to get service. There is nothing up there but the two of them and their do-or-die ingenuity.

At the start of the movie, Hunter is all giddy enthusiasm, like a Reese Witherspoon go-getter from the ’90s, and Becky, lost in her malaise, is all po-faced misery and dread. But the two actors show you how these women come alive, and connect, by climbing. It’s through their expressive skill that we believe in what we’re seeing. “Fall” was made for just $3 million, and it’s good enough to remind me of another perilous small-scale thriller centered on two people doing all they can to survive: “Open Water,” the scary 2003 indie that basically extended the opening sequence of “Jaws” over 80 minutes. Movies like these come with built-in narrative devices — like, for instance, the soap-opera revelation that comes up between Becky and Hunter. There are moments when the script overdoes the millennial effrontery, especially when it’s focused on Hunter’s identity as a YouTuber who wants to document the whole climb for her 60,000 followers (“This bad boy is over 2,000 feet tall, and your homegirls are going to be climbing to the tippy tippy top!”).

Mostly, though, we’re with these two, living through every vulture attack and sudden drop that involves something like hanging from a rope and trying to grab a stranded backpack. Is there a pedestrian below who could save them? The movie deals with that possibility in a way that recalls the Robert Redford-stranded-at-sea movie “All Is Lost.” “Fall” is a technical feat of a thriller, yet it’s not without a human center. It earns your clenched gut and your white knuckles.

Reviewed online, Aug. 9, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 107 MIN.

• Production: A Lionsgate release of a Tea Shop Production, Capstone Studios, Grindstone Entertainment Group production, in association with Flawless, Cousin Jones. Producers: David Haring, James Harris, Mark Lane, Scott Mann, Christian Mercuri. Executive producer: Roman Viaris, Barry Brooker, John Long, Dan Asma.
• Crew: Director: Scott Mann. Screenplay: Jonathan Frank, Scott Mann. Camera: MacGregor. Editor: Robert Hall. Music: Tim Despic.
• With: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mason Gooding.

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Review: Two women alone on a platform 2,000 feet in the air? ‘Fall’ somehow makes it work

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One of cinema’s great wonders is the way a few moving pictures on a flat screen — composed and choreographed just so — can make a viewer’s palms sweat and heart race. Just look at “Fall,” a survival thriller that at times feels like an extended experiment in audience-poking, testing how many times director Scott Mann can induce a state of mild panic by repeatedly showing the same image. That image? Two young women standing on a small metal platform, perched 2,000 feet above the ground, attached to a narrow tower with no ladder.

“Fall” stars Grace Caroline Currey as Becky, a skilled mountain climber still reeling a year after witnessing the accidental death of her husband during an ascent. Virginia Gardner plays her best friend, Hunter, a social media influencer and daredevil who tries to shake Becky out of her torpor by inviting her along as she shimmies up an abandoned communications tower in the desert. On the way up, the ladies do have a ladder — rusty and shaky. But while they’re triumphantly taking selfies at the top, the way back down collapses.

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Mann and his co-writer, Jonathan Frank, follow a lot of the formulas for these kinds of movies, for better and for worse. On the downside, they pad out their story with Becky’s personal trauma, making her unresolved feelings about her husband’s death a bigger part of the plot than they need to be.

On the upside, “Fall” does what the best survival movies do, by carefully enumerating the resources the heroes have at their disposal so that we can enjoy watching them figure out how to deploy these pieces wisely — or wince as they waste chances. At the moment when the ladder crashes, Becky and Hunter have no cell service, and the backpack with their water is stuck on a dish about 20 feet below them. But they do have a drone camera, a flare gun, two phones and climbing gear. How can they use what they have to get help, while avoiding the circling vultures and whipping winds?

A similar question could be asked of the filmmakers: Can they do enough with this tiny amount of material to fill a whole movie? Well … sort of. Mann and Frank throw in some unexpected twists and obstacles; but while this film is quite long, it still feels like it’s missing one or two more story beats, either early or late. The space occupied by Becky’s heartbreak could’ve been filled with something more viscerally gripping.

That said: Oh jeez, that tower is so tall, and that platform so small, and those women look like they’re barely hanging on. For the most part, “Fall” works because it plucks on the same raw nerve, over and over. How many times can Mann freak out the audience by cutting to a vertiginous shot of the unfolding crisis? Every time. Sometimes cinema is simple.

'Fall'

Rating: PG-13, for bloody images, intense peril and strong language Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes Playing: In general release Aug. 12

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Fall Is a Dizzying, Thrilling Late-Summer Success

By Richard Lawson

A simple “because it’s there” was justification enough for George Mallory to scale Mt. Everest. But for the courageous-foolish climber at the center of Fall (in theaters August 12), it’s grief that drives her up a looming, abandoned antenna tower, an attempt to feel alive again after a devastating loss. She has that in common with varied figures from cinema past, from the sad surfer in The Shallows to the mourning spelunker in The Descent to even Sandra Bullock ’s stricken astronaut in Gravity .

Fall , directed and co-written by Scott Mann , may be derivative in that way. It is also strongly redolent of the sleeper-hit shark thriller 47 Meters Down , both concerning two adventurous women finding themselves stuck in a terrible place. But Fall seems happy in that company; it doesn’t buck against convention so much as seek its own sturdy place within it. The film more than succeeds in that endeavor— Fall is an engrossing dog-days surprise, a nimble thriller that accomplishes a great deal with a remarkably small budget. (A reported $3 million.)

Grace Caroline Currey plays Becky, once an avid rock climber now in a stagnant haze following the death of her husband—which she and her best friend, Hunter ( Virginia Gardener ), witnessed up-close while traversing a cliff face. Hunter is a daredevil social media influencer, free-wheeling and reckless but certainly competent. She sets her eyes on a rusty tower in the middle of the desert because it seems like a novel thing to climb. Hunter coaxes her friend to come along, hoping some major risk-taking will shake Becky out of her malaise.

As the two ascend the tower, Mann ably builds the vertiginous tension. The tower creaks and groans; the ground below terribly recedes as the women work their way up a long and obviously corroded ladder. With clever camerawork and some judiciously applied visual effects, Mann gives the film a startling immediacy. It’s dizzying stuff, this obviously doomed journey into the sky. Fall achieves notes of poignant visual grace, too, especially a scene shot in silhouette as Becky and Hunter sit atop the tower, wondering what to do.

See, the ladder breaks, and their cellphones won’t work, and no one knows they’re up there. Fall is a survival story, a study in managed panic and clever resourcefulness. Befitting the genre, there’s even a menacing animal, one whose entrance has been nicely foreshadowed earlier in the film. Currey and Gardener convincingly render the nightmare, oscillating between the numbed calm of trying to work through a difficult problem and the emotionally ragged tenor of these two friends realizing the fatal hopelessness of their situation. 

A backstory secret is revealed, of course, one teased out subtly and then credibly processed by both characters. Fall ’s only major narrative misstep is a nasty twist that doesn’t add much to the film beyond extra, and unneeded, grimness. It’s also a twist that’s been done, in almost exactly the same way, in one of the films mentioned above. Fall is otherwise too inventive a film for such cheap mimicry.

Fall survives that bobble because what’s come before is so shrewdly staged. I know, intellectually, that these two actors weren’t really at the top of an enormous antenna while Mann and his camera circled them in a helicopter. But it often looks like that’s exactly what happened—much more so than in any number of movies that have spent lavishly on synthetic imagery at the expense of old-fashioned ingenuity. Fall is a crafty little movie that grips, and rarely lets go, for 100 or so minutes. It’s a welcome refreshment here in the badlands of August, when the search for excitement so often comes up short.

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‘Fall’ Film Review: Heights-Driven Thriller Successfully Maintains Its Grip

This suspended-suspenser plays to audience acrophobia

Like a provisions-packed knapsack, a good deal of emotional backstory gets shoved into the first half-hour of “Fall” before it traps two female climbers 2,000 feet above the ground in a remote stretch of desert for the rest of its running time.

Will that friendship be tested? Of course. But the true signal that co-writer (with Jonathan Frank) and director Scott Mann has his thrill-hungry audience’s needs in mind is that before adventuring besties Becky and Hunter can even get to the base of the TV tower they intend to scale, they lock eyes with a carcass-gnawing vulture, who gets a righteously gnarly, ominous close-up.

In other words, you’re in good talons with “Fall,” a better-than-average B-movie corker that’s almost like a corrective these days to the behemoths that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on mayhem only to bludgeon us with exhilaration-free, numbingly digitized peril. If you long for the sweaty-palmed giggling inspired by Harold Lloyd hanging off a high-rise’s clockface or Tom Cruise on the harness-necessitating side of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper, you will likely fall for “Fall.”

Cruise’s “Mission Impossible” character Ethan Hunt even gets a shout-out in Mann’s and co-screenwriter Jonathan Frank’s screenplay, invoked as an adrenaline god by daredevil vlogger Hunter (Virginia Gardner, “Runaways”), on a mission to snap her pal Becky (Grace Caroline Currey, “Shazam!”) out of a yearlong bereavement following the death of Becky’s husband Dan (Mason Gooding).

The movie’s “Free Solo”–esque prologue, set on a sheer mountain face, depicts that ill-fated climbing accident, witnessed by the two women. Twelve months later, Becky has curled inward into the drinking, crying, suicidal life of a shut-in, ignoring the emotional pleas of her worried dad (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), until bouncy, sassy Hunter shows up at her door with her version of a self-help scheme: Secretly ascending a disused TV tower for the one-year anniversary of Dan’s death, Becky will then be able to get past her grief, while Hunter, armed with a drone and a selfie stick, gets to create a lot of sexy-dangerous YouTube content.

The screenplay is chockful of platitudes about facing death, living life, confronting fear, moving on, letting go, blah blah blah, but that dialogue matters less than whether Currey and Gardner are a believable Gen-Z team of self-gratification junkies looking like they’re having fun doing something crazily reckless. From that angle, the duo’s energetic performances suffice, carrying an authentically warm and teasing camaraderie into the California desert, past that No Trespassing sign, up hundreds of rusted rungs, and onto a tiny circular platform that threatens to become the site of Becky’s and Hunter’s last selfie when the tower’s uppermost ladder separates from its loose bolts and strands them.

Mann’s previous hackwork in the grizzled-male action genre (“The Heist,” “Final Score”) won’t prepare you for how dedicated he is to avoiding scared-damsel vibes and centering instead the pair’s fearlessness and smarts. (Panic isn’t absent, mind you, just saved for when appropriate.) “Fall” can then focus on maximizing its one-location two-hander, toggling between what’s outlandishly fun about enduring this particular hazard (which is based on a real TV tower, one of the highest structures in the US) and what’s believably clever in the details of how Becky and Hunter try to save themselves.

On the characterization front, things can get clunky — one revelation is eye-rollingly predictable, and a third-act twist feels cribbed from a lot of unreliable-narrator movies. But viscerally the movie delivers — the site-specific peril is suitably unnerving when the stuntwork, effects, and cinematographer MacGregor’s more height-intensified shots are in synch, and the rescue hacks these tech-savvy women devise from their available items (phones, binoculars, shoes, drone, selfie stick, tower light, push-up bra) are enjoyably crafty enough to earn the movie’s one self-satisfied bit of dialogue: “That’s some MacGyver shit.”

And don’t forget those feathered harbingers of doom. This may be the first movie to apply the Chekhov’s gun rule to vultures, a portent sure to satisfy the more horror-minded ticket buyers, not to mention anyone else eager for the kind of back-to-basics survival excitement “Fall” refreshingly serves up in this dreary age of apocalyptic popcorn emptiness.

“Fall” opens in US theaters August 12.

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A Movie So Ideal for the End of Summer That It’s Actually Called Fall

August has always been a wasteland, the Sunday night of months, when the weather is at its sticky worst and everybody who has the ability to fuck off to someplace more pleasant has already done so. If you don’t have the means, there’s the cheaper sanctuary of the cineplex, with its welcoming darkness and arctic air-conditioning — except that after a summer in which theatrical releases mounted a rousing comeback , the studios neglected to schedule any big movies for this period in which we most need something dumb and fun. Fortunately, there’s a not-that-big movie that fits the bill of being silly and simple enough to fill a lazy afternoon without demanding anything strenuous from its audience at all. That movie is Fall , in which two young women climb up to the top of a remote TV tower for the sake of closure — and also content — and then get stuck up there.

Fall is part of that grand cinematic tradition in which attractive actors get trapped somewhere dangerous and have to struggle to save themselves, hopefully for at least the 80 minutes required for an acceptable feature-length. Recent-ish participants include Ryan Reynolds, who in a lull in his career back in 2010 spent the entirety of Buried in a wooden coffin; his spouse Blake Lively, who was trapped on a rock in the ocean by a persistent shark in the improbably good in 2016’s The Shallows ; and Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, and Kevin Zegers, who got marooned on a ski lift suspended over some convenient wolves in 2010’s Frozen . Like those movies, what Fall offers is a double layer of tension. Will Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner) figure out a way to make it off a 2,000-foot TV tower unscathed? And will writer-director Scott Mann figure out a way to draw out the suspense for long enough when there are only so many things that can happen on top of a 2,000-foot TV tower and one of them is in the title?

Does it really matter? I’m tired. Tapped out. I have no means for a vacation at the moment and nothing else left to give to this season, and Fall asks for so little that it feels like too much to demand something as basic as logic or characters in return. See, Becky’s husband Dan (Mason Gooding) died during a rock-climbing excursion the two of them were taking with Hunter, and a year later, Becky’s still mourning — you can tell by the fact that she drinks alone at bars. Then Hunter, her internet-famous bestie, shows up with a proposal that will help Becky get her mojo back: They’re going to climb the decommissioned B67 TV tower out in the California desert. Becky is a sad brunette and Hunter is a fun blonde, and that’s about all there is to the two, despite a brief gesture toward an extreme-sports frenemies dynamic right out of The Descent . Braving the height looks like the bigger challenge at first — there’s a ladder up the side of the tower, so it doesn’t require Spider-Man-like free-climbing skills. But then the ladder, rusted and neglected, sheers off, leaving the two women trapped on a narrow platform high above the earth.

There’s blistering sun, and an attempt to get help with a flare gun, and when things get really desperate, some marauding vultures. Mann and his crew built a version of the tower close to a cliff to give his shots a real sense of dizzying height and a more tangible sense of danger. An incredibly weak twist pays off with a hilariously gruesome, triumphant finale. But what really makes Becky and Hunter’s little saga so seasonally appropriate is that it feels like a consolation for those of us feeling a little stuck ourselves. These two daring, adventure-seeking women head off for what’s supposed to be a fun getaway that tests their limits and restores their sense of self, and what happens? They get stranded, sunburnt and dehydrated, unable to get a phone signal or anyone’s attention as scavengers try to eat them. Sure, the vertiginous shots up the side of the tower are stomach-turning, but what’s really satisfying is the message that sometimes it’s better just to stay home. It’s Fall , get it? Summer is over. 

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Frequent use of profanity, including "ass," "a--ho

Grieving character gets drunk and has to be stoppe

Parents need to know that Fall is an action thriller dealing with overcoming grief and fear. It centers on two young, adventurous women -- Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner) -- who may be aspirational figures for teen girls. They're incredibly brave, and one is a fearless daredevil…

Positive Messages

Themes of friendship, facing your fears, and living life to the fullest. That said, living by this mantra gets the characters into a life-threatening situation.

Positive Role Models

The main characters are young women who are incredibly strong and brave, as well as creative problem solvers.

Diverse Representations

Story centers on two strong, brave female mountain climbers/adventurers, Becky and Hunter, though there are moments in which they're objectified. Black supporting character.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Explicit modeling of reckless, dangerous choices. Peril comes from characters putting themselves in a dangerous situation, but threats that come from nature are terrifying, realistic, sometimes fatal. Wounds are bloody and graphic. Vultures peck and disembowel a carcass; organs seen. Suicidal intent displayed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Women wear low-cut tank tops, athletic gear, nightgowns and are photographed through "the male gaze." Hunter is a YouTuber whose memorable mantra is "t-ts for clicks!" Pole-dancing reference and quick visual. Romantic conversation between married couple in bed together.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent use of profanity, including "ass," "a--hole," "d--k," "screw that," "s--t," "son of a bitch," "t-ts," and "whore." One use of "f--k off."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Grieving character gets drunk and has to be stopped from driving. Prescription pills are taken, and a character pours many into her hand to indicate that she's considering intentionally overdosing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Fall is an action thriller dealing with overcoming grief and fear. It centers on two young, adventurous women -- Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter ( Virginia Gardner ) -- who may be aspirational figures for teen girls. They're incredibly brave, and one is a fearless daredevil. But -- and perhaps this is because almost everyone behind the camera is a middle-aged man -- there are elements that undermine the female-empowering storyline. For example, there's a gratuitous pole-dancing scene. And the camera doesn't miss an opportunity to show how their tops just can't contain their breasts ("t-ts for clicks!" is Hunter's mantra). The women are trying to survive the elements, and the peril they face is nonstop and intense. Injuries are graphic, bloody, and even deadly. A despondent character gets drunk in a bar, almost drives home, and contemplates suicide. Persistent use of profanity includes "ass," "d--k," "s--t," and "f--k off." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (18)
• Kids say (61)

Based on 18 parent reviews

Warning, not for young teens

Great 11 and up., what's the story.

In FALL, rock climbers Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter ( Virginia Gardner ) set out to climb one of the United States' largest structures, an abandoned radio tower. When the 2,000-foot climb doesn't go as planned, the women must find a way to get to safety -- or die trying.

Is It Any Good?

Two women climb to new heights, only to find they can't escape the patriarchy in writer-director Scott Mann's vertigo-inducing actioner. Fall is competently made, with cinematography that will have viewers on the edge of their seats. It's one part suspense, one part horror. This is about surviving the elements, like a different kind of Cast Awa y -- one borne out of the main characters' recklessly overconfident decisions. And, just like in a horror movie, viewers will want to yell at the screen: "Don't do it!"

From a parenting standpoint, there's a great benefit to that approach: Perhaps, when faced with the option of participating in dangerous situations, teens who've seen Fall will "know better" because they've walked in the characters' shoes. There's no doubt that Mann is a dad, especially when the storyline takes a turn that reinforces the idea that "Father knows best." But there's also no doubt that Mann and his co-writer Jonathan Frank are men who grew up seeing women portrayed on screen in a different way than we expect today -- and that's where Fall plummets. Warrant's "Cherry Pie" blasts throughout, and it's hard to imagine that two 28-year-old women in 2022 would even know this sexist 1990 anthem, much less make it their ring tone. They're wardrobed so that their breasts spill out of their shirts, with Mann so aware that it's objectification nonsense that he writes a justification into the script. And, somehow in this story that's about a woman finding her inner strength when she's already incredibly physically strong, the script finds a way to make it about men ( sigh ). Just like Becky and Hunter's plans, this film starts with promise, only to drop with a thud.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the appeal -- and risks -- of extreme sports. Why do you think people choose to participate in dangerous activities? What role do YouTube and social media play in encouraging creators to attempt wild stunts?

Would you call Fall "female-forward storytelling"? Why, or why not? How do you think it might have been different if it were written or directed by a woman?

What are the movie's messages? Does the story undercut those messages? If so, how? What will you take away?

Is drinking glamorized? Are there realistic consequences? Why does that matter?

Talk about the courage that Becky and Hunter demonstrate. Is it misguided, given the events that transpire? Where's the line between daring and foolhardy?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 12, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : September 27, 2022
• Cast : Grace Caroline Currey , Virginia Gardner , Jeffrey Dean Morgan
• Director : Scott Mann
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Thriller
• Topics : Sports and Martial Arts , Friendship
• Character Strengths : Courage , Teamwork
• Run time : 107 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : bloody images, intense peril, and strong language
• Last updated : September 29, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Fall (I) (2022)

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Fall Movie Review : A terrific survival thriller with heart pounding intensity

• Times Of India

In-depth Analysis

Our overall critic’s rating is not an average of the sub scores below.

Fall - Official Trailer

Users' Reviews

Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

Saumen Bagchi 978 358 days ago

It is not so horrific and spine chilling , there was more room to make it better

K K 431 days ago

Could have been better. However, worth a watch as it conveys a message to the vloggers to be cautious and absolutely sure of what they want to do before engaging in dangerous stunts in the name of adventure and gaining fame through social media

Surya Manupati 434 days ago

Another Version of the 2013 movie Gravity. Same tropes and everything. But yeah not bad, nothing great either.

Smruti Ranjan Jena 33653 501 days ago

one time okay movie................

Kaushik Biswas 3330 501 days ago

A really wonderful one. A new type and tension build up is nicely done. A very good story and script. Nicely done movie.

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Fall: a vivid, vertiginous thriller

Essentially a single-location two-hander, Scott Mann’s tense, taut film sees two friends stranded on a tiny platform atop a 2,000-foot TV tower in the middle of a desert – with no means of descent.

5 September 2022

By  Philip Kemp

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Essentially a two-hander, Scott Mann’s Fall has no choice but to rely on tangible chemistry between its leads. Fortunately, Virginia Gardner and Grace Caroline Currey, as the relentlessly upbeat Hunter and her traumatised best friend Becky respectively, play off each other with credible conviction.

When the two women find themselves marooned, 40 minutes into the film, on the small octagonal platform at the top of a 2,000-foot TV tower in the western desert with no means of descent, it hardly comes as a surprise. The omens have been laid out for us: a pair of vultures feeding on a dying prairie dog, close-ups of the tower’s rusty bolts rattling as the climbers start their ascent, Hunter’s breezy assurances (“You can do this!”) only serving to accentuate Becky’s nervous apprehension. Mann (Heist, 2015; The Tournament, 2009) doesn’t generally go in for complex movies, and as soon as we see the two young women approach the tower they’re proposing to climb, it’s easy enough to see what’s coming.

The fascination of the film lies in the increasingly desperate stratagems they employ in the hope of getting rescued, and in watching as one by one each of their attempts inevitably hits the buffers.  Amid the terror, though, Mann finds room for unexpectedly touching moments – as when Becky scatters from the summit the ashes of her husband Dan, who died on the climb that kicks off the film’s story.

Only once does Fall do something wholly unpredictable, and regrettably it’s a move that knocks a hole in the film’s narrative structure. Around fifteen minutes before the end of the movie, it’s revealed that the events we’ve been shown in the previous twenty minutes have been a fantasy in Becky’s mind – a retrospective hiatus that adds little but frustration as we mentally peel away what happened from what didn’t.

This apart, Mann and his team make creative use of what’s not only a two-hander but, for most of its length, a single-location movie, comparable to Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth (2002) or Steven Knight’s Locke (2015). DoP MacGregor (who also shot Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium, 2019) deploys a series of inventively vertiginous angles, while making lyrical play with the desert sky in its changing moods, their subtlety echoed in Tim Despic’s score. Gardner and Curry’s performances grow more dynamic as the tension mounts, but plaudits should also go to the crew of stunt and climbing doubles who, by the look of it, earned their bread many times over.

►  Fall  is in  UK  cinemas now.

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Fall (2022)

November 14, 2022 by Robert Kojder

Fall , 2022.

Directed by Scott Mann. Starring Virginia Gardner, Grace Caroline Currey, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Mason Gooding.

Best friends Becky and Hunter find themselves at the top of a 2,000-foot radio tower.

Director Scott Mann (also co-writing alongside Jonathan Frank) practically backs himself into a corner with Fall , leaving it difficult to care whether the protagonists in peril atop a 2,000-foot radio tower live or die by the time they start scaling it.

A simple setup goes on for roughly 30 minutes, establishing characters as various degrees of annoying, unlikable, or flat-out dumb (if such a subgenre exists of idiotic thrillseeking white women willingly placing themselves into danger that we are somehow supposed to care about, you can drop Fall right in there).

Becky’s (Grace Caroline Currey) life is a mess one year after a tragic mountain climbing accident that saw the death of her husband Dan (Mason Gooding). She appears to be an alcoholic with no direction, and her father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) worries about her. However, he says horrible things about Becky’s late husband to prove his point that she needs to stop wasting time morning him. He means well and is looking out for his daughter, but the dialogue doesn’t exactly paint him as a positive force in Becky’s life.

To be fair, dad realizes he has an unproductive approach toward reaching his distant daughter. As such, he convinces Becky’s best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner), who was also there the day Dan fell to his death in a freak accident, to check up on her and to do something together to put her in a more healthy state of mind hopefully. It’s also apparent that Becky and Hunter haven’t spoken much since the tragedy. Hunter suggests climbing a massive radio tower (almost twice as tall as the Eiffel tower) and spreading Dan’s ashes. Cue the themes about confronting trauma and living life to the fullest (which involves a death wish for some people).

At first, Fall feels like it’s trying to be a parody of the frustrating stupidity I keep bringing up. Not only do Becky and Hunter (especially the latter) come across as dolts (who in the hell would climb a random tower that no one knows is even safe to do so, and more importantly, has parts constantly creaking the further they go up), but there’s also a social media angle as Hunter has a sizable following from her climbing and encouraging people to find a crazy activity that makes them feel alive. The message behind it is also smartly laid out without beating it over anyone’s head.

While Fall boasts a clever concept, most of its moves and plot reveals are telegraphed stolen clichés from nearly every other type of survivalist movie (including the one that should be banned from all future scripts unless it’s legitimately well executed). Fortunately, Becky and Hunter display resourcefulness and resiliency once stranded, turning them into characters worth rooting for.

The performances from Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner reflect this, as they give convincing physical performances despite the unconvincing green screen background. The downside is that they are given some weak dialogue involving an utterly unnecessary plot twist (one that can also be seen coming from a mile away, provided the viewer is paying attention). Thankfully, the script doesn’t spend too much time on it, but it does show that the filmmakers are straining for things to give these characters to do while stuck atop the tower.

What’s confounding is that with a running time of approximately 110 minutes, Fall does have the choice to cut some of this out. There are also clever ideas that play off of being stranded 2,000 feet in the air and what to do to get themselves rescued. It involves technology, not in the way one might assume, but not enough to open up a discussion on what works and doesn’t. There’s at least one decent fake-out moment of potentially being rescued, vultures circle the area at night, and some of the climbing, dropping, roping, and swinging make for thrilling acrobatic maneuvers. 1

A version of Fall that trims the first act bloat and cliché plot twists would probably play with tighter pacing and more intensity. As is, those issues are the film’s unrecoverable downfall.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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Fall Review

02 Sep 2022

You can almost imagine the ’70s B-movie disaster-movie-poster tagline for Fall : something along the lines of “2,000 feet of TV tower terror!” This is an enjoyably throwback breed of thriller, a movie only interested in making your palms leak sweat and your adrenal glands go into overdrive. In those modest goals, it is entirely successful.

It’s a ruthlessly efficient genre exercise. Characters and their respective motives are established quickly and unfussily: Hunter (Virginia Gardner, in a fearlessly fun turn) is a thrill-seeking YouTuber chasing clout by clambering up the fictional tower; her best pal Becky (Grace Caroline Currey, the emotional anchor and audience surrogate for the “nope!” moments) is a grieving widower hoping to conquer her climbing fears. Both are seeking closure after tragedy hit 12 months earlier, in a Mission: Impossible 2 -style opening sequence (a comparison openly embraced when one character calls another “Ethan Hunt”).

So, against all available better judgement, the pair of friends agree to make the climb up the “fourth-tallest structure in the United States”, and within 20 minutes of elapsed runtime they're ascending the ladder. Soon enough, the rusty steel cables start rattling, and so do your nerves, leaving us under no illusions as to what kind of film this is. Essentially it’s a series of problems being solved under extreme conditions (How do we find a phone signal? How do we drink water? How do we wee?); setbacks piling up and minor victories being achieved. While that means it follows a fairly familiar route, there’s room for at least one major surprise.

Scott Mann’s direction and MacGregor’s vertiginous cinematography do a decent job of making a boringly functional structure look cinematic and exciting.

But it hardly matters if the plot is somewhat formulaic because the experience is so brilliantly executed; so richly, stupidly, edge-of-your-seat exciting. Scott Mann’s direction and MacGregor’s vertiginous cinematography do a decent job of making a boringly functional structure look cinematic and exciting; when a character looks down at one point, the camera whips down too. There are CGI and green screens, inevitably, but the location photography in California’s Shadow Mountains makes full use of natural light and big skies, totally selling the danger.

It’s silly. Of course it’s silly. You don’t need a science degree to know that multiple laws of physics are being defied. There are terrible decisions being made roughly every ten or 15 minutes (“It feels solid,” one character says of a ladder that looks anything but). There is dialogue about personal drama that feels like it could probably wait until after they’ve sorted all the life-or-death stuff first. It doesn’t matter: Fall aims to thrill, and succeeds with flying, vertigo-inducing colours.

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• DVD & Streaming
• Drama , Thriller

Content Caution

In Theaters

• August 12, 2022
• Grace Caroline Currey as Becky; Virginia Gardner as Shiloh Hunter; Mason Gooding as Dan; Jefferey Dean Morgan as Dad

Home Release Date

• September 27, 2022

Distributor

Movie review.

Becky is completely and desperately stranded in her pit of despair.

Her beloved husband, Dan, died while out on a rock-climbing jaunt. Despite all the proper precautions taken, his equipment failed, and he fell like a helpless stone from a very high mountain wall. Becky was right there, climbing beside him. And she saw it all.

Now all these (what is it?) weeks (months?) later, she wanders hopelessly with little to guide her. The postage-covered cardboard box that holds Dan’s ashes still sits on the entryway counter where Becky dropped it. It silently watches as she leaves for the local bar and then staggers back home to get another drink, pop another pill.

Her dad is trying to get her to snap out of her funk and start life again. But all Becky can see is dark clouds. All she can feel is pain. And all she can say to her father is … well, hurtful, nasty things. He once spoke harshly of Dan, you see. And Becky’s current cup of misery spills over so easily these days.

Just before Becky fatally drowns in that cup, however, she gets a call from her BFF Shiloh Hunter. Hunter was a great friend to both Becky and Dan. And if anything, she was the best climber of all three of them. And so even though Becky doesn’t want to be “saved”—for this surely is another ploy orchestrated by her Dad—she opens the door and lets her girlfriend in.

Hunter has plans. Yes, she admits that Becky’s father called her. But she would have been there soon in any case had she known how bad off Becky was. In Hunter’s opinion, the only way Becky will ever pull herself up by her own carabiner is to face her fear straight on. Hunter knows exactly what to do: They’re going to climb.

In fact, they’re going to climb up the B-67 TV tower. Haven’t heard of it? That’s no surprise. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and it’s been defunct and abandoned for years now. But this skinny tower of iron and steel stretches some 2,000 feet straight up. It was once the tallest structure in the United States—so high that it needs a constant blinking red beacon on top to ward off low-flying aircraft.

And this, this will be Becky’s salvation. Together they’ll climb to a small platform at its peak and Becky will scatter Dan’s ashes. Like Dan used to say, “If you’re scared of dying, don’t be afraid of living.” That’s exactly what they’ll do, ‘cause there’s no living that compares to hanging off a small platform by one hand 2,000 feet in the air.

Of course, anyone who takes even a little time to think about a long-abandoned TV tower might wonder, Uh , wait, doesn’t iron and steel rust? And their answer would be, sure enough. Ladders, railings, rungs and supports do indeed rust. And old, rusty bolts rattle and wobble loose.

Becky and Hunter are indeed climbing together, hoping Becky will climb out of her pit of despair. But what they’ll find at the peak of tower B-67 is another question altogether.

Positive Elements

Becky and Hunter are good friends who both are willing to give their all for the other. Hunter repeatedly encourages her friend that she is much stronger than she gives herself credit for being. During their time together we learn of some points of strain in their relationship. But the two apologize and forgive.

Dan, on the other hand, is revealed to be less than what Becky always thought he was. In fact, her father’s harsh words about Dan—for which Becky had pushed him out of her life—turn out to be pretty accurate. Dad tries nonetheless to help his struggling daughter at every turn. Eventually, Becky and her father have a moment of healing and forgiveness, too.

Bravery and self-sacrifice abound here. Hunter and the film make it clear that people should live their lives to the fullest. (Though those statements could be misinterpreted as a license to take foolish risks. And on that front, there are some rather foolish choices made here.)

Spiritual Elements

Sexual content.

Becky and Hunter both wear tank-tops that reveal some skin. Moreover, Hunter has a social media channel that she’s recording herself for, so she wears a push-up bra to emphasize her attributes and takes a number of pictures and videos with that feature in mind. (The movie’s camera watches closely, too.) “T—s for clicks,” she proclaims. Later, though, she removes that bra to use it for something else. (She removes it while still under her top.)

We find out that Dan had an affair with someone.

Violent Content

Things get pretty violent and bloody in this PG-13 film. We see one person fall from a great height, but don’t see that person impact the ground. On the other hand, we do see one dead body that’s bloody, ripped and torn and then being eaten by vultures. Someone stuffs a large object into a wound on this corpse. The camera also examines a small animal that’s still alive with its organs hanging out. Vultures swoop in and begin eating this creature, too.

The birds swoop in an attempt to knock an injured person off a tower pole. One of the women also sustains a large cut on her leg that the vultures go after. However, one of those birds is grabbed, has its brains bashed out and is eaten in turn.

People dangle from heights in precarious ways in high winds. They swing on ropes and slam into the metal side and crossbeams of the tower. The tower falls apart under the weight of people climbing on it. They’re cut, injured from falls, and have their flesh torn from rope burns. Someone is almost hit by a speeding truck. Becky has a dream of waking in bed covered in blood. People feel the effects of having no food or water.

Crude or Profane Language

There are at least two f-words (perhaps more) in the tensest moments, along with more than 30 s-words. Joining those are several uses each of the words “d–n,” “b–ch,” “a–hole” and “h—.”

God’s and Jesus’ names are misused a total of 17 times (God being combined with “d–n” on three of those). Crude reference to male genitalia are uttered.

Drug and Alcohol Content

After her husband dies, Becky hits the liquor bottle hard. We see her staggering drunk in a bar and then going home to reach for another drink to wash down a prescription drug of some sort. In fact, it appears she’s about to take a handful of the pills before a call from Hunter stops her.

Other Negative Elements

We see one of the women urinating off the side of the tower platform (seen from a long distance away). Someone falls over and vomits. Two guys steal a vehicle instead of offering rescue to people in need.

Fall is a tense but spare film. After all, how much can you do when your characters are trapped 2,000 feet in the air on a 4-foot-wide platform?

That location and those story limitations certainly intensify the film’s acrobatic dangling, especially when you layer in up-close rusted breakage and acrophobia-inducing camera angles. But those constraints also tend to hold a magnifying glass up to this pic’s kinda rusty and formulaic seams. At times it almost feels like someone pasted a What If? or a And Then sticker on the various sky-high scenes.

That aside, though, the bigger problem for family audiences comes in the form of Falls constant flow of profane and foul language, along with some gore and booziness. Those bits cause this fingertip hanging flick to slip and they make it far less suitable for an exciting climb into your local theater seat.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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'The Fall Guy' review: Ryan Gosling brings his A game as a lovestruck stuntman

In “Barbie,” Ryan Gosling ’s job is Beach. In “ The Fall Guy, ” it’s Stunt and he’s pretty great at his gig.

Gosling nicely follows up his Oscar-nominated Ken turn as an embattled Everyman who falls 12 stories, gets thrown through glass and pulls off an epic car jump, among other death-defying moments in the breezily delightful “Fall Guy” (★★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters Friday).

Director David Leitch, former stunt double for a fella named Brad Pitt, revamps the 1980s Lee Majors TV show as an action-comedy ode to the stunt performers who never get their due, while Gosling and Emily Blunt dazzle as likable exes who reconnect amid gonzo circumstances.

"I'm not the hero of this story. I'm just the stunt guy," says Colt Seavers (Gosling) in voiceover as we first meet him. Colt is considered Hollywood's best stuntman, doubling for egotistical A-lister Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and fostering a flirty relationship with camera operator Jody Moreno (Blunt). However, a stunt goes accidentally awry in his latest movie, breaking his back as well as disrupting his love life, mental health and entire status quo.

'The Fall Guy': Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt talk 'epic' 'I'm Just Ken' Oscars performance

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A year later, down on his luck and confidence still shaken, Colt is parking cars as a valet at a burrito joint when he gets a call from producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham). Jody, now an on-the-rise director, needs him in Sydney to work on her first huge sci-fi epic “Metalstorm.” He gets there and after a gnarly cannon roll in a stunt car where he takes out a camera, Colt learns that not only did Jody not ask for him, she doesn’t want him around at all. 

Still, the old spark's there and it turns out she does really need him: Tom has befriended some shady dudes and gone missing, and Gail tasks Colt to both keep Tom's disappearance a secret and also find the dude. Alongside stunt coordinator and pal Dan Tucker (Winston Duke), Colt uncovers a criminal conspiracy and in the process goes undercover as Tom in a nightclub (wearing some Ken-esque shades and cool coat), gets so high he sees unicorns and teams up with a dog that only takes commands in French.

Colt is put through the physical ringer during his twisty hero's journey, and it’s impossible not to love him through every punch, kick, stab and dangerous feat because of Gosling’s offbeat charisma. Before “Barbie,” he showed his considerable comedic talents in “The Nice Guys” and “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” yet marries them well here with a healthy amount of vulnerable masculinity and sublime nuance. With him, a thumbs-up – the stuntman’s go-to signal that everything’s OK – is also a way for Colt to try and hide his sensitivities.

Like Leitch’s other movies, from “Bullet Train” to “Atomic Blonde,” “Fall Guy” is filled with fights, explosions and assorted derring-do for Colt to (barely) live through. One mayhem-filled car chase scene has Gosling’s character tussling with a goon on an out-of-control trailer interspersed with Blunt singing Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds.” (It's essentially a two-hour argument for a stunt Oscar category.) The movie sports a definite musical heart, with an amusing scene between Jody and a weepy Colt set to the Taylor Swift lovelorn jam “All Too Well,” and is also interestingly timely considering a plot point about deep fake technology.

The one downside with this sort of stunt spectacular is Colt’s mission to find the narcissistic Tom and getting into hazardous shenanigans takes away from his romantic stuff with Blunt. Playful and quick with the zingers, their characters awkwardly rekindle their romance – in one sequence, she spills all sorts of tea about their past relationship in front of their crew – and you miss them when they're not together.

For ’80s kids, Majors was the “Fall Guy” – and Leitch’s movie pays tribute in multiple ways to the show and its scrappy spirit – but Gosling makes for a fabulous heir apparent. He’s not just Ken. He’s also Colt, and Gosling’s not done showing us the true extent of his talents. 

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Movie Review: Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are great fun in ‘The Fall Guy’

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Ryan Gosling in a scene from “The Fall Guy.” (Eric Laciste/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Emily Blunt, right, and Ryan Gosling in a scene from “The Fall Guy.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Ryan Gosling in a scene from “The Fall Guy.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Winston Duke in a scene from “The Fall Guy.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Aaron Taylor-Johnson in a scene from “The Fall Guy.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Ryan Gosling, left, in a scene from “The Fall Guy.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Emily Blunt, left, and Ryan Gosling in a scene from “The Fall Guy.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

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One of the worst movie sins is when a comedy fails to at least match the natural charisma of its stars. Not all actors are capable of being effortlessly witty without a tightly crafted script and some excellent direction and editing. But Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt seem, at least from afar, adept at that game. Just look at their charming press tour for “The Fall Guy.” Theirs is the kind of fun banter that can be a little worrisome — what if their riffing is better than the movie?

It comes as a great relief, then, that “The Fall Guy” lives up to its promise. Here is a delightful blend of action, comedy and romance that will make the audience feel like a Hollywood insider for a few hours (although there are perhaps one too many jokes about Comic-Con and Hall H).

Loosely based on the 1980s Lee Majors television series about a stuntman who made some extra cash on the side bounty hunting, Gosling takes up the mantle of said stunt guy, Colt Seavers.

Colt is a workaday stunt performer and longtime go-to for a major movie star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Tom is the kind of deeply egotistical and self-conscious A-lister who tells everyone he does his own stunts and worries out loud about Colt’s jawline being distractingly softer than his. I think the word “potato” is thrown around as a descriptor. Taylor-Johnson has quite a bit of fun playing up all his eccentricities that you hope, and fear, are at least somewhat inspired by real horror stories of stars behaving badly.

The film comes from director David Leitch, the Brad Pitt stuntman and stunt coordinator who helped bring “John Wick” to the world and directed “Atomic Blonde” and “Bullet Train.” He’s a guy who not only has the vision and know-how to bring the best in stunts to films and make them pop, but also has a vested interest in putting them in the spotlight. Forget the Oscar, how about just any acknowledgement? Perhaps “The Fall Guy” is just one tiny step on the path to making audiences more aware of some of the behind-the-scenes people who really make movies better and risk it all to do so.

It’s revealing that the movie starts with Colt suffering a terrible injury on a set. The stunt that goes wrong is one he’s just done and doesn’t seem remotely nervous about. The film cuts to his recovery and semi-reclusive retirement until he gets a call from Tom’s producer Gail (a delightfully over-the-top Hannah Waddingham) begging Colt to come back for a new film. They need him, she pleads, as does his longtime crush Jody (Blunt), who is making her directorial debut. She waits to inform him that Tom is missing and he’s the one who has to find him. On the quest, Colt encounters tough-guy goons, enablers, a sword-wielding actress, and a dead body on ice that all lead up to something big and rotten. And like a selfless stunt guy, he does it all out of sight of Jody — trying his best to save her movie without giving her something extra to worry about. Nothing about it is particularly plausible, but it’s not hard to get on board for the ride, and much of that is because of Gosling.

While he’s not quite underappreciated for his comedic timing, especially after “Barbie,” it’s fun to get to see him really embrace and lean into the goofiness — whether it’s crying and singing along to Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” or quoting movie lines to his stunt coordinator pal (Winston Duke, always a good addition) in the midst of an actual fight.

There is something very juvenile and sweet about Jody and Colt’s will-they-won’t-they romance, with its mix of attraction, banter, misunderstandings and hurt feelings. It was a genius stroke to cast these two opposite each other and it leaves you wanting more scenes with the two.

Working with a script from Drew Pearce (“Hobbs & Shaw”), Leitch packs the film with wall-to-wall action, in both the film’s movie sets and its real world. And with the self-referential humor, the industry jokes and the promise of a little romance, it feels like one of those movies we all complain they don’t make anymore.

“The Fall Guy,” a Universal Picture release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “action and violence, drug content and some strong language.” Running time: 126 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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Ryan Gosling is 'The Fall Guy' in this cheerfully nonsensical stuntman thriller

Justin Chang

Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy. Universal Pictures hide caption

Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy.

From the 1933 action film Lucky Devils to the 1980 comedy-thriller The Stunt Man to Quentin Tarantino 's Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood , filmmakers have long delighted in turning the camera on stunt performers, those professional daredevils who risk life and limb to make action scenes look convincing.

It's a hard, often thankless job, which is why for years people have lobbied the motion picture academy to present an Oscar for stunt work. And of course, it's a dangerous job: Just last month, while shooting the Eddie Murphy movie The Pickup , several crew members were injured during a stunt involving two rolling cars.

There's a lot of vehicular mayhem in the noisily diverting new action-comedy The Fall Guy , a feature-length reboot of the '80s TV series. Ryan Gosling stars as a highly skilled stunt performer named Colt Seavers, who, despite his cynical film-noir-style voiceover, genuinely loves his job.

Colt loves movies and moviemaking, loves hurling himself off balconies and strapping himself into soon-to-be-totaled automobiles. Most of all, he loves Jody Moreno, an up-and-coming assistant director played by Emily Blunt , and she loves him right back.

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt star in The Fall Guy. Universal Pictures hide caption

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt star in The Fall Guy.

Colt works mainly as a stunt double for Tom Ryder, a world-famous movie star played by a preening Aaron Taylor-Johnson. But when Colt suffers a life-threatening injury on the set, he quits the biz in despair and ghosts Jody for more than a year while he recovers. But then he learns that Jody is directing a big-budget sci-fi movie in Sydney and wants him to be Tom's stunt double again. Upon arriving Down Under, however, Colt finds out that Jody did not ask for him and has no idea why he's here.

The reason for Colt's appearance on the set is one mystery in a cheerfully nonsensical thriller plot devised by the screenwriter Drew Pearce. There's also a body in a bathtub, an incriminating cell phone and several amusing side characters, including a busybody producer played by Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso fame.

Author Interviews

Hollywood 'stuntman' reveals tricks of trade.

Another key player is Colt's best friend and stunt coordinator, Dan, played by the always excellent Winston Duke . In one endearing running gag, Colt and Dan keep quoting dialogue from classic films like The Last of the Mohicans , The Fugitive and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all of which The Fall Guy giddily tries to outdo in its sheer volume of death-defying mayhem.

Before long, Colt isn't just performing stunts. He's forced to put his well-honed survival skills to good use off the set, whether he's beating up thugs in a nightclub, punching villains in a helicopter or getting tossed around in the back of a speeding garbage truck. That's one of several set-pieces that the director David Leitch opted to shoot using practical techniques, rather than CGI — a decision that gives this stunt-centric movie an undeniable integrity.

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The Fall Guy is undoubtedly a passion project for Leitch, who once worked as a stunt double for actors including Brad Pitt and Jean-Claude Van Damme. (He nods to this by giving Colt a handy canine companion named Jean-Claude.) Leitch can direct action beautifully, as he did in the Charlize Theron smash-'em-up Atomic Blonde . But he can also go too flamboyantly over-the-top, as in sloppier recent efforts like Bullet Train and Hobbs & Shaw . The Fall Guy is better than those two, but it would have been better still with cleaner action, tighter editing and a running time south of two hours.

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Blunt is such a good comedian and action star that it's a shame she doesn't get more to do in either department; Jody may be in the director's chair, but as a character, she's mainly a second banana. The Fall Guy is Gosling's picture. Unlike the brooding, taciturn stuntmen the actor played in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines , Colt is a wonderfully expressive goofball. There's a moment here, after a fiery boat chase around Sydney Harbour, when Colt emerges triumphant from the water, clothes dripping and muscles bulging, while a euphoric cover of Kiss' "I Was Made for Lovin' You" surges for the umpteenth time on the soundtrack. It's ridiculous and gloriously overwrought — and like the best-executed stunts, it comes perilously close to movie magic.

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The Fall Guy

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With action, comedy, romance, and a pair of marvelously matched stars, The Fall Guy might be the rare mainstream movie with something to entertain everyone.

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David Leitch

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Colt Seavers

Emily Blunt

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The Fall Guy review: a near-perfect summer blockbuster

“Director David Leitch's The Fall Guy will remind you why you fell in love with movies in the first place.”

• Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt's magnetic lead performances
• Numerous thrilling set pieces and stunts
• A refreshing blend of action and romance
• Several obvious third-act twists
• A few stylistic decisions that don't totally work

A summer blockbuster made for then and now, The Fall Guy is a love letter to the oft-unsung efforts of the Hollywood stunt community. Loosely inspired by the 1980s TV series of the same name, the film is the brainchild of director David Leitch ( Bullet Train ), a former stuntman, his producing partner and wife, Kelly McCormick, and its charismatic goofball of a star, Ryan Gosling . Together, they’ve made a movie that is decidedly modern in its style and sense of humor, but also refreshingly old-fashioned. To put it simply: It’s been a minute since Hollywood has produced an action movie that has as much faith in the strength of its big-screen romance as it does in the awe-inspiring spectacle of its many explosions and fistfights.

The Fall Guy ‘s faith, fortunately, isn’t misplaced. The film is bursting at the seams with not just high-octane stunts but also soul-stirring declarations of love and heartbreak. It has everything you could possibly want from a film like it, whether that be high-speed chases, nightclub brawls, slow-motion shots of its leading man pulling himself triumphantly to his feet after taking a tough hit, hilarious moments of physical comedy, or montages of Gosling and his co-star, Emily Blunt, looking at each other with so much palpable longing that they’ll make even the most cynical among us believe again in the power of love. You’ll leave it reminded why you even fell in love with movies in the first place.

Tonally, The Fall Guy exists in the same lighthearted comedic space as another Gosling-starring classic, The Nice Guys , which was written and directed by Lethal Weapon scribe Shane Black . The latter wasn’t involved in the making of The Fall Guy , but his fingerprints are all over it. The film’s script was written by Black’s Iron Man 3 co-writer, Drew Pearce, who brings a distinctly Shane Black-esque, quasi-self-aware voiceover to The Fall Guy and fills it with the kind of small visual gags and narrative payoffs, including an ingenious use of a Miami Vice Stunt Team jacket, that Black has repeatedly proven to be his bread and butter. Even more importantly, the movie gives Gosling the same chance to mix screwball comedy and genuine pathos that The Nice Guys did eight years ago.

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The actor takes full advantage of that opportunity. He confidently and charismatically leads The Fall Guy as Colt Seavers, the experienced go-to stunt double for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), an egotistical movie star. When the film begins, Colt is enjoying both his position as a well-respected stuntman and his budding romance with Jody Moreno (Blunt), a camerawoman with dreams of directing a movie of her own one day. Colt’s confidence is, however, violently rattled by a dangerous accident that puts him out of action and leads him to ghost Jody. After getting used to spending his nights working as a valet, Colt is pulled out of his self-imposed exile by Tom’s producer, Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), who tells him that Jody has specifically asked for him to perform some of the stunts on her big-budget, sci-fi directorial debut.

It’s not until Colt has arrived on the set of her movie that he realizes Jody not only didn’t ask for him but also hasn’t forgiven him for abandoning their once-promising romance. Colt, desperate to win her back, lets Jody take out her frustration and anger by continually making him redo a sequence in which he’s set on fire and thrown against a wall. His efforts to redeem himself take a further turn when Gail informs him that Tom has gone missing and that Jody’s movie will be shut down if he doesn’t find him and bring him back to set. In his quest to do so, Colt quickly finds himself caught up in a criminal conspiracy involving, among other things, a highly sought-after phone and a dead body in an ice bath.

The Fall Guy doesn’t ultimately invest as much thought or time into developing its dime-a-dozen crime plot as it does Colt and Jody’s love story. That proves to be a smart decision in the end, as Gosling and Blunt’s onscreen chemistry is so electric that you’re willing to look past the obviousness of some of The Fall Guy ‘s third-act twists because you just want Colt and Jody to get back together. It’s become common for Hollywood blockbusters to place romance at the very bottom of their priority lists, but The Fall Guy cares deeply about its leads’ love for each other. As far as movie-star pairings go, Gosling and Blunt feel as tied to Golden Age greats like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn as they do more modern rom-com duos like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Watching them flirt and laugh together, one remembers why action and romance have been fundamental parts of Hollywood’s specific brand of moviemaking from the very beginning.

The Fall Guy recognizes that fact. In one memorable instance, Leitch cross-cuts between Colt’s dangerous fight with a group of mysterious kidnappers in the back of a speeding garbage truck and a lovelorn rendition of Phil Collins’ Take a Look At Me Now (Against All Odds) performed by Jody in a karaoke club. This section works far better than it should, as do most of The Fall Guy ‘s many ’80s needle drops, which reflect, thanks to their cranked-up power chords and full-throated musings of love, the epic nature of the film’s romantic spirit. They also match the scale of The Fall Guy ‘s set pieces, which get bigger and more breathtaking the further into its runtime it gets.

The film’s standout action sequences include Colt’s previously mentioned dumpster fight, which sees him end up surfing along the streets of Sydney on a broken piece of metal, as well as a nighttime boat chase through Australia’s Port Jackson Bay and a third-act series of explosions that climax with one car literally flipping over another. Behind the camera, Leitch and his team go all out — executing each of The Fall Guy ‘s brawls, chases, and fiery vehicular stunts so flawlessly that seeing the film on the biggest screen possible should be a mandatory requirement. It’s a movie that doesn’t just offer an inside look into the lives of Hollywood stuntmen but also pays tribute to their work by packing itself with the kind of rip-roaring set pieces that would be impossible to physically pull off were it not for the performers who are willing to regularly put their bodies on the line to do them.

For some, the disposable nature of The Fall Guy ‘s noir-tinged criminal conspiracy may be disappointing, especially given that it takes center stage a few times throughout the film’s final third. While The Fall Guy marks the first time that Leitch has successfully found the right shade of goofy, some of the director’s stylistic flourishes don’t work as well as others. His decision to accentuate a neon-lit showdown between Colt and a group of drug dealers with visual effects and animated lines that light up every time Gosling hits one of his combatants feels, for instance, out of place, and a prolonged use of split-screen in The Fall Guy ‘s second act eventually crosses the line and becomes gratingly meta.

The film’s flaws are few and far between, though. It’s made with so much love that you can’t help but root for it as you’re watching it, and it — much to its benefit — fundamentally understands the movie-star capabilities of its leads. The Fall Guy , in other words, isn’t afraid to rest patiently on a static shot of Gosling sitting alone in a car, and that’s what allows even its quietest moments, like an intimate, emotionally vulnerable conversation between Colt and Jody, to hit just as hard as its biggest stunts. Its confidence makes watching the film an easy, joyous experience. It’s a movie that asks you to jump headfirst without any hesitation or questions into its heightened behind-the-scenes world, and you should. The Fall Guy will catch you.

The Fall Guy is now playing in theaters.

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The summer is all about the blockbuster. These types of movies are the perfect form of escapism. There's nothing better than sitting in a cold theater on a hot summer day with a huge tub of popcorn as you prepare for a blockbuster to blow your mind. The action movie tends to be the best blockbuster because of the nonstop thrills and riveting entertainment.

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At a time when anti-Semitic extremists are storming the U.S Capitol, running for office, and declaring war on Jewish people via social media, it might not be the best time for a movie that expects you to sympathize with Nazis. And yet, that hasn't stopped Operation Seawolf from sailing into theaters and on-demand streaming services this month.

The film, which follows the crew of a German U-boat during the waning days of World War II, casts Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV) as German war hero Capt. Hans Kessler, who's ordered to lead the Nazis' remaining U-boats on a desperate (and likely fatal) mission to attack the U.S. on its own soil. As he and his crew make their way toward New York City in one final bid to turn the tide of war, Kessler finds himself struggling with both the internal politics of the ship and his own sense of duty as the Third Reich crumbles around him.

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‘The Fall Guy’ Fizzles With $28 Million in Ticket Sales

While enough for No. 1, the big-budget original movie gave Hollywood its lowest start to its summer box office season since 1995.

By Brooks Barnes

Reporting from Los Angeles

“The Fall Guy” seemed to have everything.

Megawatt stars. Death-defying stunts . Splendid reviews. An original story — what sequel-weary moviegoers say they want.

Universal backed “The Fall Guy” with a six-month marketing campaign, releasing trailers that racked up 400 million views and carpet-bombing televised sporting events, including the Super Bowl, with ads.

It added up to only $28.5 million in North American ticket sales from Friday to Sunday, the worst start to Hollywood’s all-important summer season since 1995. “The Fall Guy” cost Universal at least $200 million to make and market and was released in 4,002 theaters in the United States and Canada. It collected an additional $37 million overseas.

This is why studios do not take risks on new stories. “The business is so tough, and it’s so hard to break through with new ideas,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers. “You want to explain to shareholders why you spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a newfangled idea that crashed?”

“The Fall Guy,” an action comedy, shares a name and some basic D.N.A. with a television drama that ran on ABC from 1981 to 1986. But the movie’s story is entirely new. Scott Mendelson, a box office columnist with his own subscription newsletter , said moviegoers complain that Hollywood isn’t making enough original films, “only to stay home or go elsewhere when they do.”

Ryan Gosling, fresh off “Barbie” and a celebrated singing performance at the Academy Awards, plays a down-on-his-luck stunt man who gets caught up in a murder mystery while trying to rekindle a romantic relationship. Emily Blunt plays a movie director. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham and Jason Momoa round out “The Fall Guy” cast.

It was the first time in 19 years that Hollywood’s summer season — a four-month period that typically accounts for 40 percent of annual ticket sales — did not start with a superhero or a sequel. Last year, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” from Marvel started the summer with $118 million in opening-weekend ticket sales, going on to take in $846 million worldwide.

To find a season opener with lower ticket sales than “The Fall Guy,” you would have to go back to 1995, when “French Kiss,” a mid-budget romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, arrived to about $18 million in today’s dollars. (The most-recent original movie to start a summer season was Ridley Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven,” which arrived to $31.5 million in 2005, after adjusting for inflation.)

When movies arrive to disappointing ticket sales, studios always say they are hopeful that word of mouth will result in a wider audience in the weeks to come. Universal was no different on Sunday, saying in a statement that it “anticipates continued playability for this action/thriller, perfect-for-date-night film in the weeks ahead.”

In the case of “The Fall Guy,” it may not (just) be spin. Romantic comedies can start slow and build. “Anyone but You,” made for $25 million, opened to a dismal $8 million in Christmas weekend sales and chugged away to $219 million worldwide. In 2022, “The Lost City,” made for $68 million, arrived to $30.5 million and ultimately took in $193 million.

Brooks Barnes covers all things Hollywood. He joined The New York Times in 2007 and previously worked at The Wall Street Journal. More about Brooks Barnes

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Bermondsey Tales: Fall of the Roman Empire review – Brit gangster throwback gets imperial

Michael Head stars in this less than convincing story of a London crime lord and his associates

T here was a period in the Cool Britannia days when you couldn’t throw a brick at a cinema in the UK without hitting a British gangster movie with a castful full of dodgy geezers blagging their way around an underground scene full of drugs and farfetched capers. Some were ludicrously entertaining creations of actual working-class talent, such as Nick Love’s The Business , others transcended genre pigeonholing to work their way into various top critics’ lists (such as Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast ), and still others were Guy Ritchie movies. There were hundreds of less high-profile efforts too, destined for VHS or DVD, but each having somehow found funding.

These days the British gangster flick is no longer flavour of the week, or month, and there’s something appealingly bullish about attempts to make these films now. Bermondsey Tales: Fall of the Roman Empire is exactly the sort of film that would struggle to find mainstream funding these days, but there’s something worth respecting about the evident hustle involved in making it. Broadly speaking, it tells the story of Henry Roman and his London crime empire, with a patchwork of vignettes showcasing the scrapes, crises and jobs gone wrong that make up the fabric of the lives of Roman and his associates. Enterprising marketing has gone all out to convince the unwary that the film stars John Hannah (Four Weddings and a Funeral), but his role is small; the star of the show is in fact multi-hyphenate Michael Head (as the eponymous Mr Roman), who also writes and directs.

Roman, his associates and their adventures feel very much like a tribute act playing the greatest hits of the genre. The only problem is that the act is more of a wedding band than anything else, with variable acting, even more variable comedy, and compromised technical work. Perhaps most disappointingly, the violence is almost wholly unconvincing; that’s one area where you really want this kind of film to go for it, but the pulled punches are the sort of thing you’d see on stage, and film is an unforgiving medium where this sort of sleight of hand is concerned. Points for effort, but without the energy that the genre is waiting for.

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