Free Guy – Movie Review

Introduction

Hello everybody, as you can hopefully see, I am reviewing Free Guy the movie. I only watched it for Ryan Reynolds. Free Guy is a movie about a normal guy that always wears a blue shirt, anyways as every movie protagonist needs he has a friend named Buddy, he’s the comedic relief and actually has a character besides being funny. Players are people in real life playing the game, they have sunglasses on to distinguish themselves from NPCs.

The main character’s name is Guy, also known as ¨blue shirt guy¨ to ¨the other people.¨ He’s a regular guy working a regular job at a bank, except it’s only regular to the people in his world. The bank he works at almost gets robbed as much as a teenage girl gets Starbucks, I’m joking of course. The movie takes place in Free City (a game) with some parts taking place in the real world

Start of review

I don’t want to jump into this review negative so I’ll state one thing I love about this movie, drum roll please *drum roll noises*. Ryan Reynolds playing Ryan Reynolds, he seems so genuine in his acting and not over exaggerated like every action movie character. Another thing I like is how it starts off with a guy gliding down from the sky with sunglasses, it introduces you to how people who wear sunglasses are special.

The references in this movie are used so casually and not out of place with all this chaos and action happening every day. The comedy is alright in this movie as well, sometimes it’s a bit forced and corny, but every movie has that moment.

 I love the world building in this movie, it introduces characters quickly but not too forced. We get introduced to the “cool” girl who is also Guy’s dream girl, and she’s looking for proof of a secret level, telling us this world is actually a video game. She then goes on to predict what everyone is going to say except Guy *wink wink*. Guy looks back at her in awe, she’s his dream girl. He tries approaching her but gets hit by a train.

Guy gets to the bank, which immediately gets robbed. He then tries to defend the bank and is somehow successful, this is a part I didn’t really like. I would’ve liked to see Guy fail a couple of times and get better at defending himself slowly. He then steals the robbers sunglasses and steps outside, he proceeds to put them on and we get our first view of how players see the game. He picks up a med kit and gets all his injuries and physical problems fixed. I like how they use music to portray the mood.

Game developers, Keys and Mouser, see that Guy has killed a player and they prepare to go in and smoke him (kill him). He escapes, right? No that would be lame, he gets hit by a car driven by the developers.

Then we figure out that Guy’s dream girl, also named Millie and Keys used to date her. We also find out that the game designer of free city stole code from “life itself”, this code includes, NPC coding and the main map of “Life Itself”, if we can call it that, the secret level *wink wink*.

Millie goes to the place where special game clips are stored including a clip of the secret level. Guy follows and asks if he can help her, she rejects him and tells him he can’t do anything at his level. 

Instead of leveling up by doing things like, rob a store, punch a civilian etc he decides to do good things. He buys Goldie a way bigger tank (yes this is very important). Guy gains quite the audience from his special way of leveling up.

Guy then finally returns to his job at the bank and his buddy, Buddy, gives him a scolding about how he shouldn’t try new things and stick to the normal routine. Guy offers Buddy a pair of sunglasses from the robber that just broke in. Buddy refuses and Guy is disappointed.

Millie asks for Keys help to break into the warehouse and steal the info she needs, Keys agrees and Millie makes it inside, she grabs the info but an alarm goes off and guards spawn and start shooting at her, somehow missing more shots than a storm trooper. Conveniently Guy shows up and saves her, they then make an escape in slow-mo on a motorcycle breaking through glass, not very unique but still cool.

Then the CEO of “Soonami”, which seems like a direct blow at Blizzard, shows up in a very hype beast looking outfit and shows how corrupt he is, although it was pretty obvious once you learn he stole code. The way they portray his character was funny and someone you could easily get annoyed at which was intended and good.

The fact that Guy is so oblivious about being in a game is entertaining to me, when Millie asks him where he got his skin his response is “It’s always sorta been there”. 

Millie tells Keys that they kissed and Keys questions how since there isn’t a button for that which I find confusing because later on Millie kisses Guy after he loses his memories after Antwon (the CEO of Soonami, the company that made free city) reset the server which also reset the AI completely. I’ll explain more about that later.

Guy asks Buddy to help him get some info for Millie. They go to the warehouse and Buddy being the 900 IQ security guard he is tries to figure out how to hold a gun. I think it’s a good way to portray how there was unfinished code.

Antwon goes into a very smart thinking session which lasts 5 seconds and thinks of nothing, having his worker come up with the idea to reboot the server. I think this really shows how Antwon is lazy and didn’t ever do any hard work for his success. After rebooting the server Guy has no memory of the past and what’s the solution? You guessed it! Millie kissing him, I thought this was pretty basic and I didn’t get a reaction from it.

Apparently Guy opens and closes his blinds a lot and he forgot why until Millie kissed him, and because of movie magic you can see the main map of “Life Itself.” I think this could’ve been done in a better way but this isn’t a very serious movie so it’s fine.

Keys helps Guy by making a bridge out of nearby buildings leading to the “Life Itself” map, Antwon wanting to stop Guy sends out an unfinished NPC called DUDE, DUDE gets beaten by his own dumbness. Great. Buddy and Guy start crossing the bridge but Buddy has to get left behind and it was quite sad, this just proves how he had a good character. Guy reveals that Antwon did steal the code and he gets arrested, in the end it was all happy and good. The build up to Antwon’s arrest was mediocre.

Overall I thought this movie was pretty good, the references reminded me a lot of Ready Player One. Sure, the movie was pretty corny, but that’s a part of the movie and makes it better in my opinion.

Thanks for reading this review everyone, don’t have a good day, have a great day – Yoel  (Thanks to Gunnar for the art)