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Free Guy Movie Review

Free Guy is a 2021 science fiction action comedy film directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Reynolds. It’s a very entertaining, charming blockbuster.

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“Don’t have a good day, have a great day“

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It is about a banker who discovers that he is actually an NPC in an open-world video game. He tries to become a hero of his own story and save all his friends from deletion by the game’s creator. I was excited for this movie as a gamer. We do not get many gaming movies, so this was a welcome surprise. After finally seeing it, I acknowledge that it has its clichés, but for the most part I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this product.

The core of the film is the creation of a true A.I. within this game’s world. This is by far the best aspect of the movie as it explores artificial intelligence and just what that would mean within the context of the video game. The film depicts the NPCs in an extremely realistic manner as all gamers would instantly recognize their repeat patterns, but the movie goes further to ask what if one of them would someday gain conscience. It’s a fascinating question in an era when games become increasingly complex.

Ryan Reynolds is phenomenal here. At first, you would think that his Guy is wildly different from his ‘Deadpool’, but both characters, despite seeming different in personality, have the same over-the-top quality to them, thus Reynolds was perfectly cast. There is a definite streak of ‘The Lego Movie’s Emmett in Guy himself as both characters are sweet, naïve and happy-go-lucky. Reynolds steals the show from everybody else and is the heart of the movie.

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Still, there is one other cast member who really made an impact and that is Jodie Comer. Her Millie is so likable and the main love story between her and Keys was so well done and actually surprisingly sweet and effective in the context of the story. I loved everything about her, but I wish that I could say the same for the villain. Taika Waititi is fun as this over-the-top game creator, but he became too goofy and too typically evil with no nuance to the character whatsoever.

Which brings me to my next point – the sheer old-fashioned nature to the movie came off as a double-edged sword. The inspirational dialogue, the romance and the goofy villain all seemed as if they were coming from an 80s and not a modern blockbuster for better and for worse. It gave the film a certain charm, but one could see themselves asking for more edge while watching this movie.

Free Guy certainly is fun in its action scenes that are full of great nods to video games from the weaponry to the power-ups to the points system. However, the action scenes were for the most part similar to each other and I wished for more truly standout set pieces. The music was also ridiculously loud and at first overly annoying in too aggressive hip-hop tunes, but it became better in the second half with Mariah Carey’s Fantasy being best utilized. The VFX are pretty good and the world of Free City is very well realized, but I wished to have seen even more world building. The movie’s second half is awesome, but the first half took its sweet time to get there.

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