Movie Review - Free Guy

Director: Shawn Levy
Genre: Action/ Comedy/ Science Fiction/ Adventure
Runtime: 114 minutes
Year: 2021
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Lil Rey Howery, Joe Keery, Taika Waititi, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Aaron W. Reed, Britne Oldford, Camille Kostek, Mark Lainer

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2021 MOVIE CHALLENGE
WEEK 47: A SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE
 
Description: A bank teller (Ryan Reynolds) discovers that he’s actually an NPC inside a brutal, open world video game.

Review: Free City is a popular online videogame, in which bank teller Guy lives in a loop. He is a Non Playable Character (NPC) who finds out about who he actually is and tries to fight it.
The appeal for “Free Guy” lies primarily in the concept of the story. Every gamer has hit or beaten the insignificant citizen in games that look similar as the fictional Free City. The film tells the story from the perspective of this background character. Doesn’t immediately sound like a must-see, but Ryan Reynolds plays the lead role and  due to him “Free Guy” is the success that it is. His wonderful innocent charisma in this film is unbelievably entertaining. His performance is pure, hilarious and optimistic. This movie would never have worked as well as it did if Reynolds wasn’t in it.
Yet beyond the main character Guy, there is a while world of details. The story about the NPC who becomes self-aware is grounded in reality by the subplot that takes place in the real world. Jodie Comer plays Millie, a game programmer who along with her friend Keys has an interesting relationship and shares conflict with Keys’ boss Antwan, who has stolen a piece of code from them and put it into his own, now very successful, game. With Millie and Keys, it’s more about their creation, they see the beauty in it. This storyline gives a lot more weight to the plot, increases the tension and makes us care about the conflict.
“Free Guy” is full of pop-culture references, which I am a sucker for. And it has one quick, but very awesome cameo that I won’t spoil.
Even though the movie is almost 2 hours long, time flies by. The film has some hilarious moments, strong action sequences and the visual effects are very impressive. And this is one of the few movies out right now, that isn’t really based on anything.
I was pleasantly surprised with “Free Guy”, it was such a fun film.

Rating: 3,5/ 5