Review | Free Guy movie review: Ryan Reynolds heads frenetic sci-fi action comedy as a nobody in a video game who finds a sense of purpose
- Ryan Reynolds stars as a bank teller who discovers he is a background character in a video game and begins to question his purpose and everything around him
- Free Guy takes a good half-hour to find its feet – but, sustained through its bugs and glitches by Reynolds, it builds to a riotously entertaining third act
3.5/5 stars
Frenetic, frivolous and fitfully entertaining, sci-fi action comedy Free Guy stars Ryan Reynolds as a mild-mannered bank teller who discovers he is really just an innocuous background character in an ultra-violent open-world video game.
This realisation motivates him to push back against the powerful player avatars that terrorise his hometown, and help a pair of real-world developers save their game from a megalomaniacal tycoon.
Following the huge success of Killing Eve, British actress Jodie Comer lands her first major Hollywood role as Millie, the disgruntled designer who suspects Free City creator and Soonami CEO Antwan (Taika Waititi) of stealing her concept.
Scouring the game world for clues in the guise of beautiful biker chick Molotov Girl, Millie inadvertently captures the attention of Guy (Reynolds). Instantly love-struck, he sets out to find her, and begins to question his true purpose and everything around him.
Millie’s former partner Keys (Joe Keery) now works at Soonami, and is initially reluctant to challenge his boss. As Guy’s off-book antics as “Blue Shirt Guy” garner real-world attention and threaten the imminent launch of Antwan’s sequel, Keys and fellow coder Mouser (Utkarsh Ambudkar) are sent into the game to hunt him down. An entire other movie could be fashioned around their goofy city police officer avatars, not least Mouser’s self-proclaimed “apex predator” rabbit man.
