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Hollywood can Make Good Films
I can’t take any credit for this but somebody once commented that “If you make clever, original, entertaining movies, people will want to see them!” Oh, how right you are an unknown person because Free Guy is the movie that we’ve been waiting for since the beginning of the pandemic era. What is clearly a breath of fresh air wavering several hundred feet over the rotten carcasses of Terminator: Dark Fate, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Black Widow, The Heights, and on and on and on.
Ryan Reynolds clearly embodies the role of Guy, the most effervescent person you will ever meet. As you start to watch it in the first few minutes, at first you think it’s a nod to Groundhog Day but then it quickly drops that premise and wastes no time moving the storyline on. In fact, there isn’t any part of the film that feels like it’s dragging. Before you even know it, you’re involved in the game. You’ve inadvertently become an NPC (Non-Player Character) in the manner f which most of the background characters are.
Guy is an NPC and lives a humdrum existence as a bank teller. His bank gets robbed a lot because it’s part of the gameplay. He ends his day, goes home, goes to sleep, wakes up, and repeats his day as he goes to work accompanied by his best friend, Buddy, the bank hapless security guard, played by Lil Rel Howery. But one day, this routine is interrupted when Millie, played by Jodie Comer, literally saunters into his life and captures his attention. He and Buddy go to the bank and it gets robbed again but this time Guy stands up to a robber and takes his sunglasses. It’s that move that becomes a game-changer. Guy puts on the sunglasses and he sees a different world unfold in front of him. And now this brief chapter closes and the new chapters come into play.
The interaction between Millie and Guy isn’t fraught with uncomfortable dialogue. Guy is a blank slate who speaks with an honesty reminiscent of Forrest Gump minus the learning disability. Millie doesn’t realize that Guy is an NPC because he’s wearing sunglasses that represents he’s a player. Millie’s objective in the game is to find her A.I. code that was stolen from her by Antwan (Taiki Waititi), the owner of the video gameplay that everyone is playing.
As she and Guy journey to retrieve the A.I. code, I found myself sitting straight up fully engaged in the story. I haven’t done that in a long time. This film was making me do it. The director, Shawn Levy, did a good job of balancing time in the game world versus time in the real world at the video game office. What was also good was that some background players were given their moment to shine and I commend Ryan Reynolds for that as he did a side video showcasing three of the background artist with their moment. At first, I was waiting on some sort of punchline but it turned out to be a genuine moment so kudos to you Mr. Reynolds for yielding the floor. You see this yielding to the background players in a pivotal key scene close to the end.
I would say that there was one moment of wokeness in the film. I wanted to hear the joke Guy started to tell but he was cut off and reprimanded doe it in that Forrest Gump moment. Aside from that, it was a fun movie. In fact, I believed he gave a nod to his buddy, Hugh Jackman when he played a dual role as the muscle-bound Dude as he fought his stronger self just like Hugh did in Logan.
I’ve seen this movie twice already and I usually don’t do that. In fact, I’m going to see it a third time sometime in the future. Free Guy is a movie that says that Hollywood can make good films if they leave out the wokeness, the politics, and the talentless.
Five out of five stars
