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Director and stunt coordinator David Leitch really wants there to be a best stunt category at the Oscars. I’m sure that’s true of everyone in his line of business but no one else has made a two hour and ten minute campaign video to drive the message home.

This indeed is what Leitch appears to have done here. Showcasing the work of stunt performers is absolutely the focus of this film. Every other aspect seems to come second to this, existing purely to support the visual representation of this one key element. There’s no denying that this would be a better movie if more attention had been paid to the story, the script, the soundtrack, the character development and even the performances but this does not seem to be the aim. Nope, they actually have someone talk about the Academy not recognising this field of movie making at the start and then almost everything that follows is an in camera action scene or someone talking about what stunt men and women have to do to capture those great shots. Still, you can’t deny that he has put together a really, really compelling argument.

So sure the dialogue is mediocre, the love story over simplified, the plot contrived and the denouement clunky but still the whole thing is an immense amount of fun and a genuine thrill to watch. The jumps, flips, fights, chases and falls are tremendous and this is both a celebration of an under appreciated part of filmmaking and a great night out at the cinema.

To be fair there is something else that really works in The Fall Guy, which wouldn’t have needed a lot of the director’s time and focus so maybe that’s why. Stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are just magnetic. This is the pinnacle of the current stage of Gosling’s career where his incredible wry charisma, fantastic comedy timing and powerful physicality are front and centre. We’ve not been here that long, this follows Barbie and The Grey Man and back in 2016 we got La La Land and The Nice Guys but only six years ago he was all earnestness and serious acting in First Man and Bladerunner 2049 and most of his filmography is similar with Drive, The Place Beyond the Pines, Blue Valentine and Half Nelson. I suspect we will see some return to this now but he explodes off the screen here as much as any pyrotechnics.

Emily Blunt does not get the same material to work with and her character is quite underserved but still she manages to excel with every moment she gets. She totally commits and makes her one dimensional part nicely believable. She even gets a couple of fights of her own, two of three tokenistic female centred action scenes in the film – only one of which is narratively necessary. It’s nice that the two actors are broadly the same age too, Gosling has almost a decade on Emma Stone.

In terms of the gender politics it is also worth mentioning that the film within a film Metalstorm (some deliciously confused hybrid between Fast & Furious and Dune) is being directed and produced by women, Blunt as the former and Hannah Waddingham, in a part straight out of a 90s action comedy, as the latter. This in itself isn’t unheard of now, even in blockbuster cinema, but it’s nice to have it included here in such a male dominated story.

Ultimately then The Fall Guy is not going to win any Oscars (although I do feel the change is coming and this will have definitely helped) but you certainly won’t regret seeing it. It has its flaws but what it does well it does really well and you’ll come out with a smile on your face, which in the end is a prize of its own.