Free Guy review – a video game movie that overcomes the genre’s pitfalls

By now, we’re very used to an action film being introduced to us through a Ryan Reynolds voiceover matched to a chaotic scene of destruction. Free Guy, at the very outset, seems to carry on this predictable tradition, but differentiates itself in one key way – this time, the Reynolds avatar we’re being introduced to is a loser, a goofy schlub who holds no power in the world he inhabits. It helps make Shawn Levy’s video game fantasy stand out in a sea of subpar Reynolds vehicles, more earnest than usual, grounding silliness and explosions in an existential crisis for a deeply flawed but ultimately lovable adventure.

Reynolds plays Guy, an NPC in a game called “Free City” – a sort of cross between Grand Theft Auto’s violent open world and Fortnite’s wacky player vs player shootouts – who works at a bank that the game’s players are constantly robbing. Guy’s is a life of Groundhog Day-esque unbreakable routine (though he does seem to retain day-to-day memories, which is horrifying if you think about it too much), as he wakes up, gets his coffee, goes to work, and is then brutalised, all to do it again tomorrow. Through a hiccup in Guy’s programming, he starts to gain self-awareness after a meeting with a player called Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer), deciding to make a change in his world, and maybe even save it from destruction before it’s deleted to make way for a sequel.

There’s an awful lot of plot to chew through in Free Guy, not helped by the fact that its story generally hits the most predictable beats possible, but Levy and writers Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn keep things light and breezy. They throw enough jokes at the screen that some of them are bound to land – even if there is a vein of hack “gamers are losers” humour that feels at odds with the film’s target demographic – and pack each frame with little details and visual gags that reward careful/repeat viewing.

Reynolds is certainly enjoying himself, allowed to be less smug and more genuinely likeable, and he makes for very smart casting; his Hollywood-perfect face instantly believable as one that would be thrown into a game as a generic CG template. Comer, meanwhile, impresses in her first major film work, switching effortlessly between English and American accents, sometimes within the same sentence. Unfortunately, the villainous Antwan, the douchey video game publisher who seeks to delete Guy and all his Free City friends, draws a truly insufferable performance from Taika Waititi, one that only becomes more annoying as the plot ramps up towards its climax.

There’s also a cloying sense of corporate synergy at play here with a series of references to Disney-owned properties in the game’s items and a few annoying cameos, something that the similarly-themed Ready Player One largely managed to avoid. Yet, mainly through the sheer force of will of Ryan Reynolds, Free Guy still manages to make you care about its virtual world. Given the woeful history of the genre, it’s no mean feat to make a video game movie that works for both gamers and general audiences, but Levy and his star pull it off in funny, heartfelt style.

Free Guy is now showing in UK cinemas.