Now that I watched the full thing I have to say that the movie is actually quite bad and I really didn't feel like even watching the second hour. The whole thing seems like the director envisioned a bunch of stunts that he thought looked cool and wanted to film them and then figured as an after thought that there needs to be some kind of "story" in there too. That story is nonsensical, asinine, uninteresting and boring. There's probably at least 30 minutes of Ryan Gosling talking about his boring relationship with the stereotypical girl boss character. Add in some completely pointless additional characters and you are guaranteed a real stinker lasting two+ hours without any real story. I suppose the kicker is that even the stunts aren't that special or interesting. A solid 4/10 movie and that is probably being generous.

Most of the movie for me was a cringe show. David Leitch was a stuntman himself so this movie is kind of a fantasy situation for an average stuntman, in which he is the real star of the movie, unrecognized and underappreciated, yet cool and humble enough not to make it all about himself like those diva actors. However, stuntman is not an actor, just like stuntman is not a director or a writer. And when he thinks he is, we see the results in the movies he directed and they are not good at all. I know that entertainment movies are mostly for escapism, but sometimes escapism can be too much and so disconnected from the reality, that it just feels strange. That stuntman fantasy world in this movie is just too much and too stupid to be a proper entertainment.

Yeah I have to admit to being disappointed with this one as well. It isn't so totally marinated in "the message" as it would have been if it came out 5 years ago, but it still whiffs of it. And the over emphasis on their relationship got a bit excruciating - not just how much run time they burned up with it, but some of the dialogue. The Jody character has put Colt in jail for breaking her heart and she says she "so wanted to be there for him." When was that, Jody? During your 304 phase when you were having all those wonderful experiences that were so much better than when you were with Colt? Yeah, sounds like you really missed him. If they had cut all the relationship related plot, they would have shortened the movie to a bearable length and got rid of the dead weight that no one cared about except the girlfriends of the guys who wanted to see this movie.

@revengine said:

Yeah I have to admit to being disappointed with this one as well. It isn't so totally marinated in "the message" as it would have been if it came out 5 years ago, but it still whiffs of it. And the over emphasis on their relationship got a bit excruciating - not just how much run time they burned up with it, but some of the dialogue. The Jody character has put Colt in jail for breaking her heart and she says she "so wanted to be there for him." When was that, Jody? During your 304 phase when you were having all those wonderful experiences that were so much better than when you were with Colt? Yeah, sounds like you really missed him. If they had cut all the relationship related plot, they would have shortened the movie to a bearable length and got rid of the dead weight that no one cared about except the girlfriends of the guys who wanted to see this movie.

Speaking of "the message" I've been thinking about why these mainstream Hollywood, Netflix and Amazon movies nowadays turn out to be complete garbage time and time again. I think it was some big name director who said a year or two ago that you can't just make a movie anymore and you have all this additional garbage to you have to take into account. Somebody remind me was it Scorsese or someone else? Anyways, whoever it was, I think he was on point. Back in the day you probably had as script mostly written by one person and then you had the director and producer who also gave their touches on the end product. Nowadays you have the script and the director and the producer and probably dozens of different consultant and interest groups who say you must have this and this ethnicity represented, women must be represented, minorities must be represented, this and that can not be said because someone might be offended etc. I imagine what ends up happening is that when all of these demands are finally met what remains is a script and story that have been shredded to pieces and barely resemble the original product. The irony is that Hollywood etc. end up paying these people millions to effectively make their films worse and to make them flop.

@aholejones Scripts written by morons with zero life experience with a lot of help from AI, which is then tweaked by "advisors" like Sweet Baby Inc. to make it relevant for modern audiences. You're watching a movie and suddenly the dialogue takes a complete 90 degree turn in order to lecture the audience about what an istaphobe they are about blah blah blah. Yeah, that doesn't stand out at all. And they wonder why people are going back to watching their older movies on physical media.