You just know that you're in for a ride full of comedy when you see some featured actors in a movie. Well, maybe one of them at least. They seem to be intertwined with the character and expression that you happen to expect. This is the case with one of the actors in the movie in this review. Amidst whatever performance in the movie, you just know there'll be comedy.
Free Guy is a sci-fi action comedy film that stars Ryan Reynolds as Guy, Jodie Comer as Millie, Lil Rel Howery as Buddy, Joe Keery as Keys, Utkarsh Ambudkar as Mouser, and Taika Waititi as Antwan. Directed and produced by Shawn Levy. The funny thing was that the cast had the likes of Dwayne Johnson, Hugh Jackman, Chris Evans and Channing Tatum as subtle and “hidden” characters that one might not easily notice.
The movie follows Guy as a bank teller, who seems to be happy and peaceful with his life, with daily routines that remain unchanged, even at work. The same things just tend to happen and he lives through them. Like the robbery that always occurs at the bank and how he and Buddy usually react to it. But his encounter with a pretty, mysterious woman made him realise he was a non-playable character in a very popular multiplayer online game.
Free City is the online game world, where Guy resides. People in real life play in the game as avatars. There are others known as NPCs (Non-player characters) which Guy and his friend Buddy were. The NPCs are characters scripted there to live their life amidst the chaos of the game world. When Guy deviated from his character and accidentally killed a player while robbing a bank, it drew the attention of the developers and owner, Soonami who tried to ban Guy thinking he was a hacker posing as an NPC.
Guy initially left with the glasses of the player he killed, which gave him a view of the game features that NPCs don't see. This made Guy explore other areas of the game, which took him to where he met the mysterious and pretty woman, Millie, in her avatar known as MolotovGirl. She explains things to him. It happened that Millie was an unemployed developer on a quest to find proof that the Free City game’s source code was stolen from her. It looked like that as her friend and co-developer, Walter (Keys) works at Soonami.
MolotovGirl became friends with Guy and helped him grow in the game as a player. This enabled him to access features and locations. He saw a different side to where he lived and considered his world. Soonami weren't having it. The CEO, Antwan found out that indeed the codes were stolen from Millie by Mouser. Free City 2 was set to be released but Guy’s adventure and quest together with Buddy and MolotovGirl threatened it. Will the quest be successful? What became of Free City? Was there more to Guy than just an NPC?
The video game adaptation of the plot was interesting. It presents an interesting idea about how the “world” you live in might not be really what you think it is. There have been few movies that employed and utilised the video game character idea. Free Guy came along and interestingly blended in comedy. Remember I mentioned that there are some characters you see in a movie and you know that comedy awaits? Yeah, Ryan Reynolds was that guy here.
Shifting between human characters and their avatars is what you see in adaptations of video game ideas into movies. The production didn't do bad with that. As expected though, such movies present this idea of a particular game character or avatar searching for something which makes them go through a lot, drawing the attention of many and even becoming heroic. Well, that's how action games are from a player’s end. So one can understand that. This was a good watch though.
Thank you for reading!
Rating: 73/100
