Attractive gaming caper
Free Guy starring Ryan Reynolds, Taika Waititi, (Millie) Jodie Comer and (Keys) Joe Keery, is an action comedy set in an open-world videogame.
Guy played by Ryan Reynolds, a blue-shirt-wearing bank-teller is shocked when a mysterious stranger shows him that his home town of Free City is actually the setting for a violent open-world videogame. Guy is an entirely expendable non-playable character
The stranger sees a spark of heroism in him, setting in motion a chain of events that will make this NPC nobody a cult hero, and enemy number one for the game’s obnoxious producer.
One day, instead of doing as he’s told, Guy grabs the dark glasses off one of the robbers, and discovers that they reveal a whole universe of special powers and other video-game shortcuts that suddenly allows him to navigate and change his reality in new ways. He starts to break free of his programming.
Millie, who herself roams Free City as a “trinity-like avatar named Molotov Girl, strikes up friendship with Guy, which starts to turn romantic, while she is waging a secret battle against obnoxious tech-bro Antwan (Taika Waititi), the head of the company that sells Free City who may have stolen the code for a far more innovative but significantly less popular program Millie and Keys created years ago.
Guy’s awakening is not emotional but practical and technological, allows him to inspire both people in real world and excels at playing a character compose entirely of ones and zeros. Guy has no real depth, because he is not an actual person.
In Shawn Levy’s galactically derivative action-comedy Free guy, Reynold’s robotic charm gives the film a boost of quality that can make it seem smarter than it is. Free Guy is supposed to be a movie all about taking risks.