Directed by Canadian director Shawn Levy, ‘Free Guy’ has a clever concept, dizzying action and a bright pop of colours with a unique and delightful lightness to it. Since Levy enjoys breathing life into the non-living, the film showcases the same; a character takes form unaware that he’s not alive in the real world.
If you are wondering whether the film has the chills of the 1968 ‘Night of the Living Dead’, you are mistaken. ‘Free Guy’ is a sci-fi action comedy that talks about a non-playable character or NPC who jolts out of the background role and takes things in his own hands.
The film introduces us to a bank teller Guy (Ran Reynolds), a NPC, who is in an open world video game called “Free City”. Unaware that he is in a game, Guy seems to be content with his life. He wakes up every day, kisses his fish, wears the same outfit, gets the same coffee, goes to work at the same bank which gets robbed many times a day by actual players in the game and enjoys the fun banter with his best friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery).
Everything is perfect for Guy until he sees the woman of his dreams Molotov Girl, the online avatar of Millie (Jodie Comer). His curiosity leads him to follow her, breaking the pattern. The encounter changes everything for Guy as now he wants to be the hero of his own story. He, somehow, gets a pair of sunglasses that reveals what the actual players see around them, including missions, medi-kits, hubs, and other things that are somewhat familiar to modern gamers. He soon befriends the Molotov Girl.
While Guy is an NPC, Millie is playing the game for a reason. She is on a quest to find the source code that proves that the Soonami Games’ head developer Antwan (Taika Waititi) stole the game that she co-created with tech genius Keys (Joe Keery) to build the wildly successful ‘Free City’, formerly called ‘Life Itself’.
On coming to terms with the truth that he is in a game, Guy tries to raise his rank by choosing only the positive missions in the game and thus, becomes an internet sensation with everyone figuring out who the mysterious gamer might be. What no one knows is that he’s the most remarkable breakthrough in artificial intelligence in history. When Millie and Keys discover their first-ever NPC character, they are more eager to save their game from Antwan and with Guy as the perfect inside man, they might be able to do so.
We know what Ryan Reynolds is capable of. The kind of action sequences he does is impeccable for he is so comfortable in this genre. No one could have done a better job at depicting Guy as he is smart as well as witty. Still, I feel there was a whole lot of scope for Reynolds to shine because we have seen the same acting in many of his previous films. He is much more hilarious as Dude, his slightly thick avatar.
The best thing about the film is Jodie Comer for she outshines everyone. She is the ultimate character that holds together both the action-driven scenes as Molotov Girl and the more character-driven ones as Millie. Joe Keery as Keys gets his best role to date. His performance as the tech genius is simply incredible.
Writer Matt Lieberman very smartly sketches the difference between the ordinary guys and extraordinary guys (guys with sunglasses) to showcase how ordinary people are neglected and the extraordinary are praised in real life. The message of the film is sewed beautifully into the intriguing sub-plots of the film as it motivates people to have faith in themselves and do whatever they desire. You just have to read between the lines.
The cinematographer also gives attention to detail by maintaining a slight difference in his camerawork when the characters are in the game versus when they are outside it. One can feel the contrast in the FPS (frames per second) as they slightly differ in the game world.
Overall, ‘Free Guy’ is a simple yet breezy film about a video game that makes sure it has the attention of the audience, especially the gamers. Without making much noise, it comes with a lot of exploration to be done under the base. Though the video game film proves to be a difficult nut to crack, this one finds a place of its own.
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