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Movie Review: Free Guy

Mike Tyrkus

Director Shawn Levy’s latest film, Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds, manages to explore the human condition and the importance of relationships while simultaneously providing an entertaining and engaging experience that is atypical of other summer blockbuster type fare.

The main character of the film is Guy (Reynolds), a non-descript bank teller stuck in a rut wherein he does the same exact thing every day, again and again. That is, until he passes a beautiful woman on the street (Jodie Comer) and immediately becomes determined to change the path of his own life in the hopes of finding her again. Of course, this proves more difficult than it sounds as Guy is only an ostensible “free guy” and is actually a fictional background character in a world-wide virtual reality video game. Now, determined to find the mysterious woman of his dreams and be the man worthy of her, Guy goes about changing his own life and world for the better in more ways than one.

Blending elements of Tron (1982) and Ready Player One (2018), the film is a mesh of the real and virtual worlds, which often seem to collide with one another. There is a sinister corporation determined to launch a new version of the game, destroying the existing version and all of its artificial characters (including Guy), to ensure that no one ever discovers that the enterprise was built upon the code of two young programmers, one of which (Comer) has been playing the game in search of evidence that would prove the theft of her intellectual property.

Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer in “Free Guy.” Photo by Alan Markfield/Photo by Alan Markfield – © 2020 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

While that may seem a bit complicated on the surface, what is so startling here is how effortlessly and effectively it all plays out. Reynolds in the lynchpin since, if he were not so personable and likeable as Guy the film simply wouldn’t work. But the actor’s everyman approach to the character makes him easy to root for. Comer also proves quite capable of bringing both programmer Milly and her virtual alter-ego, Molotov Girl, to life. Additional supporting characters such as Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), Keys (Joe Keery), and Antoine (Taika Waititi), to name just a few, manage to give the film a robust cast of characters that perfectly compliment Reynolds and Comer without anyone overshadowing anyone else.

Working from a script by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, director Levy builds a film that is every bit as interesting and chock full of entertaining extra as that of Ready Player One, but the story here is a much simpler and less convoluted one that manages to hit home a bit easier than did Steven Spielberg’s film.

At its core, Free Guy ends up being a story about the human condition and the importance of caring about those around you as much, if not more, than you do yourself. To that end, it is a refreshing and welcomed change of pace from the usual summer blockbuster fare.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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