If The Matrix and The Truman Show had a baby, which was then adopted by They Live and Inception — well, you might end up with something as sweet and sassy and wonderfully deranged as Free Guy.
SWEET AND SASSY GAME-BASED ACTION FLICK BLENDS PHILOSOPHY WITH COMEDIC VIOLENCE
IFree Guy Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer Director: Shawn Levy Duration: 1 h 55 m Available: In cinemas
f The Matrix and The Truman Show had a baby, which was then adopted by They Live and Inception, with Blade Runner and Thor: Ragnarok and Ready Player One as a thruple of godparents — well, you might end up with something as sweet and sassy and wonderfully deranged as Free Guy. Or you might not — with that many factors in play, it’s a genetic lottery that’s unlikely to produce the same result twice.
Ryan Reynolds stars as Guy, a bank teller living in an online game called Free City — think Grand Theft Auto meets Fortnite, if you’re not too tired of thinking thismeets-that. His every day is the same — wake up, greet the goldfish, grab a coffee from the barista, go to work at the bank with Buddy the security guard, duck and cover when bank robbers burst in, and maybe find time to deliver his catchphrase: “Don’t have a good day — have a great day!”
At some point he goes to sleep or into that sleep of death, but no dreams may come for this NPC (non-playable character). He reawakens and the day repeats. (Did I mention that Groundhog Day was the movie’s uncle? And Wreck-it Ralph a second cousin?)
It’s great fun watching Reynolds blithely navigate his way around Free City as bullets buzz overhead, pimped-out vehicles crash into buildings and people are thrown through windows, and worse. He affects the same calm, mildly insouciant bemusement he perfected in The Hitman’s Bodyguard and its sequel, and to a lesser extent in The Proposal and some of his many advertisements. Shucking his Deadpool persona like a soiled leather glove, he’s a grinning, harmless Everyman.
Director, fellow Canadian and future collaborator Shawn Levy (the two have another science-fiction title, The Adam Project, coming to Netflix next year) has great fun with the design of Free Guy. I love that Guy’s kitchen table includes one of those endlessly drinking bird mobile and a line of dominoes ready to be toppled, except they’re arranged in a closed loop.
The film is also full of Easter eggs, from the obscure to the blindingly obvious, but I shan’t spoil any. Though I did find the cameo by the late Alex Trebek a little odd, a reminder of how long Free Guy’s release has been put on hold by the pandemic.
But I can also reveal that the main cast members are a winning bunch, including comedian Lil Rel Howery as Guy’s in-game bestie, Buddy. Outside the game, Jodie Comer stars as Millie Rusk, though in Free City she goes by Molotov Girl and sports a British accent, which is also how the actress speaks in our real world.
She and Keys (Joe Keery) are programmers who once designed a game architecture that was bought by tech magnate Antoine, played by a delightfully unhinged Taika Waititi. Antoine folded its code into the servers of Free City, with the result that Guy has access to way more computing power than anyone planned. He might even be the world’s first truly intelligent (and funny!) AI.
When Guy gets his hands on a pair of the sunglasses that human players sport in the game, he is able to see his world for what it really is — a patchwork of power-ups, weapons caches and deadly missions. He still doesn’t understand that there’s a higher-level reality — that will come later — but he can play within the physics of the game, bending them to his new-found will. Oh, and he also falls in love with Millie’s avatar.
So on the one hand Free Guy functions as a philosophical primer for a lot of cool, think-y notions about free will versus determinism, and the way that Gordian knot gets tangled up with the idea of happiness. As Buddy points out to Guy in one of the film’s quieter moments, everything we experience is real, even if it’s only a videogame simulacrum of a larger reality. Coleco ergo sum, if you will.
But on the other hand, we get great swaths of funny cartoon violence as Millie and Guy race around the streets of Free City, trying to save it from the machinations of the evil Antoine. The movie perfectly combines the urgency of the end of the world with the giddy joy of a popcorn action-adventure tale.
You could take the same basic ingredients from Free Guy, give them a shake and a twist and wind up with a dour head-scratcher like the one with Owen Wilson (Bliss) or Matthew Mcconaughey (Serenity). Instead, Levy and Reynolds have concocted a funny, original story, with one screw loose and the rest just tight enough to hold things together.
So press Start, sit back and enjoy. ★★★★
The latest Ryan Reynolds movie, Free Guy, might be set in the world of video games, but that doesn’t mean he got to spend 12 hours straight playing Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto to prep for the role.
“I have three daughters six years old and under — there’s no 12 hours straight of anything,” the affable actor jokes from New York City. “There’s not even four hours of straight sleep.”
But the Deadpool star did enough homework into the world of gamers that allowed him to credibly play a cheerful bank teller named Guy, a NPC (non-playable character) in the violent open-world video game Free City, who becomes self-aware thanks to the coding of a pair of programmers (Jodie Comer and Joe Keery). After a chance meeting with the virtual girl of his dreams — Molotov Girl (also Comer) — Guy becomes a sensation inside the game as he steps into the spotlight racking up points by being a good guy.
But Reynolds is careful to emphasize that the action-comedy, which pits Guy against a villainous real-world publisher (Taika Waititi) who plans to delete the original Free City and its inhabitants, isn’t a video game movie.
“That’s like talking about Titanic as a movie about boatmanship. We’re using that world to tell a different kind of story.”
Filmed back in 2019, this ode to gaming culture is more about optimism and finding purpose in the world — themes that are even more resonant today, says director Shawn Levy.
They had such a great time working together they’ve already reteamed on The Adam Project, a sci-fi film due out later this year on Netflix.
But Reynolds and fellow Canadian, Levy (Reynolds from Vancouver, Levy from Montreal), also saw Free Guy as an opportunity to do something else that was special. He used a trailer for the movie as a vehicle to introduce Deadpool into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, something comic-book fans have been thirsting for since Disney snapped up Fox, the former owner of Deadpool and other assorted X-men superheroes.
Q Ryan, what resonated with you about Guy, Free Guy and the message of the movie?
A I loved the idea of those in the background stepping into the light and taking control of their life and uniting with each other and becoming agents of change. These sound like lofty and idealistic themes to put into a movie, but at the end of the day I love Free Guy because it was a riot. I loved the world and I loved everything about the tone of the film, and I certainly was excited to work with Shawn Levy. So it was amazing to be a part of that. But it also feels culturally relevant to the times we’re living through right now. Everything in the news cycle feels utterly oppressive and constant and unending, and this movie is the reason we make movies. It’s to serve as some kind of antidote or escape from that, albeit briefly.
Q So it’s not just a gamer movie?
Levy: The world of gaming is a backdrop. That’s not the subject matter. The subject matter is: How do you find personal empowerment and agency living in the real world?
Q Shawn, why was Ryan the perfect guy to play Guy?
A I’ve long admired Ryan’s
work and I knew he’s a really good actor. He’s one of the great comedic minds that I’ve seen as an audience member. I also liked that this was taking Ryan’s comedic genius, but it wasn’t Deadpool. It wasn’t the tone that I’ve seen him do in the last couple of movies. It was a chance for us to do something different together. It’s a character who is defined by his innocence, optimism and his fundamental goodness. Ryan used the word antidote, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to make something that not only would be escapist fun, but that asked the question: How do you stay positive in the face of so much negativity? How do you stay hopeful — in real life — in the midst of so much that can make you feel hopeless? That’s the central DNA and theme of the movie. It felt like something worth putting into the world two years ago, but now that it’s finding its way to audiences, it feels more topical and resonant now.
Q Where did the idea for the Deadpool crossover come from?
Reynolds: Free Guy is a wholly original idea. It’s not an IP (intellectual property — Hollywood-speak for an existing property to turn into a movie). It’s not from a comic book, and it’s increasingly harder to make movies like this in the modern age. So I wanted to hijack some other IP to sell Free Guy.
Q Alex Trebek plays himself in a touching cameo. How did that all come together? Levy: We were looking for ways to convey how Blue Shirt Guy, Ryan’s character, has become famous and a cultural touchstone. You know you are something and you know you have arrived if you are an answer on Jeopardy! After that, it was Ryan and his partner at his marketing company who came up with the idea of an Alex Trebek cameo. Reynolds: We just called him. He was everything that you’d hope and expect out of Alex Trebek. He was congenial, sweet, kind, stalwart, hardworking and he gave us this incredible gift. Just like that he was gone, so you realize how special it is. Even then we realized it, but certainly now.
Q In the movie, Ryan fights a super buff version of himself. Where did the idea for that come from?
Levy: We were talking about the script, and we were talking about these themes I’m telling you about and I remember Ryan said, “I think somewhere I should fight myself, but it should be an upgraded 2.0 version of myself, and my character’s name is Guy, so his name should be Dude.” It wasn’t in the script. We found a bodybuilder out on Venice Beach at the gym ... But I think the scene is a good summary of the experience: It’s a weird, fun movie. With emphasis on the fun.
Reynolds: We needed a character to go up against. My main enemy in the film is Taika Waititi’s character, who is not in the game. When Guy fights Dude, that scene gave us that all-hope-is-lost moment. It was such a weird, fun thing to get to make.
Q Ryan, you introduced Deadpool into the MCU by having him appear in a Free Guy commercial alongside Taika’s Korg from Thor: Ragnarok. That was genius bit of marketing.
Reynolds: My initial pitch was a short film attached to Free Guy in which Deadpool is interrogating the hunter who shot Bambi’s mom, but Disney said no to that.
Levy: Then Ryan called me and said, “I have a new idea: Deadpool and Korg comment on the Free Guy trailer.” To which I said, “That’s an awesome idea that would surely break the internet. They will never, ever say yes to that.”
Reynolds: But they did, and I was shocked because putting Korg on camera is a very expensive proposition, but I was like, “Let’s spend some of that sweet Prince of Persia money. Whatever it costs, we’re just going to go for it.” So we did.