Ryan Gosling's good graces ground The Fall Guy's meta-movie shenanigans

There's a perilous stunt at the heart of The Fall Guy. 

More dangerous than the record-breaking truck roll, or surfing a metal trash bin across the streets of Sydney. This is a movie torn between two tracks. 

Part is a super-charged satire on the excesses of Hollywood. Much of The Fall Guy takes place on the set of a fictional interstellar epic Metalstorm.  Imagine Mad Max meets Dune, except the Mad magazine version. (Yes, I'm old.)

But behind the callous producers and Easter eggs for the Comic-Con crowd is something sweeter and simpler. It's about Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) a director with her first big break, still smarting from her relationship with Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), the best stuntman in the biz who ghosted her after a high-wire fall went wrong. 

If you a fan of the 1980s Lee Majors TV series, there isn't much to see here. I mean, there's the truck — the conspicuous gold-and-brown GMC that Colt drives around and, of course, Gosling has taken the TV character's name and profession. As the original theme song goes, he's "the unknown stuntman who makes Clint Eastwood look so fine." 

So, in a way, the film is actually balanced on three legs: the action spoof, the romance and also a tribute to the unsung heroes of the industry — stunt performers.

It's directed by David Leitch, who got one of his first breaks stunt doubling for Brad Pitt in Fight Club. After segueing from stunt co-ordinator to director, with Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train, Leitch has established himself as one of Hollywood's go-to action auteurs. His movies are like firecrackers, filled with bright colourful explosions but, once the smoke clears, the memory fades. 

With The Fall Guy Leitch finally has a film with more to say than the cliche "when you fall down get back up again" ethos which this movie mocks. With his focus on the behind-the-scenes planning that action sequences require, a large part of the film is an affectionate tribute to the men and women who risk their bodies for our entertainment.

Though, like many of his films, this love letter is about as subtle as a fireball. Will you see Gosling and his on-screen stunt co-ordinator, played by Winston Duke, bro down with a fist bump and hand shake while yelling "Yeah boy, stunts!"? Yes you will. 

So, if we're to make a movie celebrating Hollywood's human punching bags, who better than Gosling? Like Harrison Ford, the more battered and bruised he gets, somehow the better. Who winces like Gosling? Who grimaces like Gosling? 

And the jabs start early as the movie opens with Gosling doubling for Tom Ryder, the supercilious star played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

As Gosling prepares for another take, there's a conference around the video monitor. Ryder mutters that Colt is showing "too much" of his own face, forcing him to do another dangerous take. 

While some of the meta-movie moments are too cute by far, what rings true is the disposable nature of stunt performers. They do the most dangerous job and if they succeed, they're forgotten. Speaking of disposable, that brings us to to plot  which centres on the disappearance of Ryder. 

Colt is brought into Metalstorm by the producer — a diet-coke-addicted schemer slurping increasingly bigger tumblers played with scene-shredding abandon by Hannah Waddingham. Improbably, she asks Colt to help find him.