Free Guy Review

Online gaming has become an important part of pop culture and it serves as the basis for the action-comedy Free Guy.

Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is a bank teller and an NPC in the game Free City. He cares for his goldfish, goes to work, gets robbed, and avoids the violence that plagues the city. Guy believes he has found the girl of his dreams when he passes Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer). This incident leads to Guy making a life-changing discovery about his world.

In the real world, Millie (Comer) is a computer programmer who is looking for evidence that her code was used to create Free City. Guy ends up helping Millie/Molotov Girl on her quest.

When the trailer was first revealed Free Guy looked like it was going to be like The LEGO Movie. Guy seemed like Emmett because they were everyman characters who were happy with their lot in life. This changed when the main characters discovered the truth about their worlds. Yet there was more to Free Guy than trying to ride on The LEGO Movie’s coattails.

In recent years there has been an increase in films that have been influenced by video games. Edge of Tomorrow was structured like a video game, whilst other films like Wreck-it Ralph and the Jumanji films were set in a video game world. The plot of Free Guy could be summed up like this: what if an NPC in Grand Theft Auto Online gained self-awareness. This allowed Free Guy to be a bit like The Matrix because Guy gets shown the truth about his world. Because of this Guy realises he can do nearly anything and builds up an inventory of weapons and items. But it also led to an existential crisis when Guy realises his world isn’t real.

Another influence on Free Guy was the cult classic Tron. In Tron, a man gets trapped in a virtual world when trying to hack the mainframe of a computing giant. Millie’s story wasn’t that dissimilar since she created an avatar to run around Free City so she can find evidence for her lawsuit.

Free Guy concept allows for commentary about the video game industry and culture. Free City was a game for adults but a lot of the player base were mostly children. It was a send-up of what many people consider gamers to be: children who said inappropriate things to each other.

Taika Waititi’s character, Antwan, represented the big games companies, i.e. EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc… This representation came in two ways, the treatment of staff and the business strategies of these companies. Millie and Keys (Joe Keery) were given the EA treatment. They got to work with a big studio but their heartfelt indie game was turned into a generic shooter. Antwan took their work and kept the profits.

Antwan’s business model was simply to make sequels and milk online games dry. As he said, ‘it’s all about IP.’ Originality was held in contempt. It’s ironic that this film made Antwan the villain considering it was a movie made by 20^th Century Studios which is owned by Disney. Disney is infamous for just churning out films and TV shows based on their franchises.

Whilst Free Guy had some deeper themes, the main aim of the film was to entertain a mass audience. It does that successfully. The video game world allows for some creative action sequences. A big sequence at the beginning was when Guy gets chased by a couple of moderators and Guy discovers his new abilities. Jodie Comer got to show off her action abilities when her character tried to raid a player’s safe house. Comer is preparing for her post-Killing Eve career.

I am a fan of Comer and she was the main reason I was interested in seeing Free Guy. Even in a popcorn movie Comer shows off how talented she is. She was paying a dual role. She was both a badass action chick and a down to Earth young woman and was able to move between both roles effortlessly. Comer also showed off her accent ability because Molotov Girl spoke with an RP accent whilst as Millie she was a standard American accent.

As a comedy Free Guy depends on how much audiences like Ryan Reynolds and mainstream Hollywood comedy. Reynolds’ character was a wide-eyed innocent who wanted to be a good guy despite the chaos around him. Guy was far away from being Reynolds’ Deadpool. The most humorous moments came at the expense of gamers and the moment that induced the most laugher at my screening involved a bit of Disney cross-promotion.

Free Guy was a fun summer blockbuster that can stand with other video game-themed actioners. It had a fair amount of action, humour, and special effects to keep crowds entertained.