Free Guy Review: The New Film By Shawn Levy Uses The World Of Video Games To Tell The Revenge Of Normality

Choose your character, upload your story, select the equipment with which you will face the mission on the big screen. The movies also have the difficulty levels. You can decide to complicate your life and venture into something extreme or be more cautious and not risk as much. Let’s open our review of Free Guy – Hero for fun admitting that Shawn Levy’s new film seems to belong to the second school of thought. In the premises, everything has already been seen and already heard elsewhere. A convenient praise to the comfort zone. On the one hand, a cyclical narrative structure, which takes up the archetype of the Day of the Marmot, with the protagonist locked in a time loop from which there seems to be no exit. On the other, a virtual world overflowing with possibilities, which seems to recall the nerdy winks of Ready Player One. Then, looking more carefully, you realize that after all, the mission is not that easy. Because finding a distinctive trait for something so “familiar” is a difficult task.

The Story Plot

The story begins as, on the streets of Free City, we follow Guy, a bank employee who in his ordinary and perfect life feels the lack of something, of a woman who can be by his side, who loves pop music and who is exactly as you imagine it. His romantic wanderings are exclusively theoretical, until one day, by chance, he meets a girl who seems to reflect all the characteristics of the woman of his dreams. Triggered by this meeting, Guy will begin to “dare”, to do unexpected things, to get out of his routine. This choice will catapult him into a new reality, to a completely new level of existence, to the point of making him question his own reality. He will become a “hero for fun”, as the Italian title of the film states, called to save his world and all those who populate it.

Starring Ryan Reynolds , Jodie Comer , Lil Rel Howery, Joe Keery, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Taika Waititi , Free Guy is a real breath of fresh air, a high-budget blockbuster with an original story that doesn’t it belongs to no existing franchise, therefore economically risky, and that indeed makes fun of the cautious attitude of those who would like to produce only sequels to keep consumers calm and satisfied.

A Breath Of Fresh Air

Set in the world of gamers, the film presents a specific language that in Italian will sound bizarre if not for Twitch patrons or for the gamers themselves who perhaps can better identify themselves within the characters, whether they are playing or not. Not only gamers, Free Guy also tells of programmers, of those who through codes and numbers are able to see beautiful worlds and stellar adventures, a real gift that players from all over the world and of all ages.

Set in a virtual reality, the film seems to put in the background all the themes linked to these parallel and intangible existences that can no longer be defined as fake, since they generate relationships and feelings and touch absolutely concrete chords of “real reality”. Not only that, the idea behind the film is that artificial intelligences can really exist and can evolve based on their gaming experience, as happens to Guy, as happens to the waitress in the bar where Guy goes to have breakfast.

Leave Your Comfort Zone

Not only that, Free Guy also seems to address real people, normal spectators, inviting them to get out of their comfort zone, to get involved and to make new experiences to enrich their lives.

However, the brilliant starting idea of Free Guy – Hero for fun , would be nothing without the performers who posted it in life. Starting from the established protagonist Reynolds, up to Taika Waititi who juggles with agility in the role of the villain, passing through the delightful Joe Keery that we loved in Stranger Things and will adore in this film, every single character has particular nuances, a language, a character that does not belong only to the screenplay, but which are the result of great interpretations, which too often are underestimated when it comes to comedy. But above all the splendid Jodie Comer shines, still unknown to most (or at least to those who have not already adored her in Killing Eve ). With a pretty child’s face, a determined physicality and a gritty look, Comer is perfectly at ease both in the role of Molotov Girl, the fierce avatar she embodies in Free City, and in those of Millie, brilliant programmer, romantic and strong-willed, tenacious and with a very strong sense of justice.

Free Guy – Hero for fun is a great toy that pours Easter Eggs and that will not fail to amuse the spectators a lot, transports us to an absurd and violent world and shows us what are the potential of the human intellect and of man himself to determine the your own destiny with a little courage and risk. Especially for the performance of, viewing in the original language is recommended.

Free Guy Review: The Last Words

In our Free Guy review we told you about the merits and shortcuts of a funny film, capable of entertaining with a bombastic action and thrilling with a simple and at the same time meaningful underlying moral. A cross between The Truman Show and Ready Player One in which pop citations will delight the most passionate audience of nerd culture.