InFree Guy，瑞安·雷诺兹（Ryan Reynolds）饰演盖伊（Guy），他是一个名为“自由城”的开放世界射击游戏中的非玩家角色。Within the world of the game, Guy and all the other NPCs are unaware of their artificial reality, they just think it’s normal for the bank to be robbed every day, for the “sunglasses people” to run amok, doing whatever they want with no apparent consequences. LikeJumani：欢迎来到丛林before it,Free Guy(scripted by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, and directed by Shawn Levy—probably best known forStranger Thingsat this point but also the director of theNight at the Museumtrilogy, making him no stranger to studio action-comedies) isn’t adapting a specific game, but instead uses the form and style of video games to tell its story. Given the flop-to-hit ratio of video game adaptations, this might be the way forward for video games as cinema—don’t adapt games, adapt the way games tell stories.
In Free City, mayhem is constantly unfolding, but Guy goes about his day, catching up with his best friend, Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), and patiently waiting out the latest robbery at the bank in which he works. He orders the same cup of coffee every day and has a closet full of identical clothes, but none of this strikes Guy as odd. His life begins to change, though, when he spots a woman singing Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” to herself on the street one day, and he stops to comment on the song. The woman is clearly expecting Guy to say something else, and this is the first hitch in Guy’s routine, and from here his life begins to branch out into new, unexpected directions. The woman is MolotovGirl (Jodie Comer), one of the “sunglasses people” in Free City, and Millie in the real world, a game developer trying to find proof that her copyrighted code is being used illegally in Free City’s build. Do you have to know much about video games to follow this plot? No.Free Guydoes a solid job keeping the mechanics of games and the plot simple.
Determined to catch MolotovGirl’s attention, Guy picks up a pair of sunglasses and learns there is a whole other reality within Free City, where the sunglasses people are rewarded for doing things like bank heists and punching civilians. Free City is very clearly based on侠盗猎车手，但它询问了像这样的游戏会发生什么问题GTAif someone played it “nice” instead of like an asshole, as intended. Guy doesn’t want to rob banks or punch the shopkeepers he interacts with every day, so he goes about Free City stopping carjackings and preventing violence and becomes known as “blue shirt guy” to players in the real world, who think he is the result of an in-game hack.Free Guyis loaded with cameos from popular gamers, of whom I recognized zero, as I do not stream people playing video games. But if you are into that, or you have kids who are into that, spotting the cameos will probably add another layer to the film.
The pro-kindness message ofFree Guy很明显，但它也带有一个集体行动，目前尤其有意义，当我们的公众生活中的许多生活都取决于社区的公共卫生行动。硬币的自私自利的一面由安托万（Taika Waititi，咀嚼喜剧反派角色）代表，这是游戏公司的首席执行官，该公司创造了自由城市。基本上，他对员工，所有坏事都是唯物主义的，粗鲁的，虐待的。似乎唯一喜欢为他工作的人是Mouser（Utkarsh Ambudkar，真正值得担任的角色），该程序员至少想要金钱和生活方式，至少要达到一定程度。Free Guyisn’t subtle about making its point, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less satisfying when Mouser starts making less self-interested choices.
家伙,MolotovG之间的爱情故事irl is equally unsubtle, but it is interesting that it hinges on Guy coming up to Molotov’s level in the game. He is not only earning literal points, but he does things simply because they are helpful to her, and this is how he demonstrates his interest. He is constantly admiring her greater capability as a sunglasses person, is impressed by her achievements, and has no agenda of his own except to advance her agenda. Reynolds plays Guy with wide-eyed charm, his action-hero persona sublimated into a rom-com cheeriness that works perfectly within the dual realities of Free City. In a worse movie, Guy would be the snarky asshole main character of the game, but the entire premise ofFree Guyis that Guy is an everyman trying to keep up with the coolest girl in the room, a plot point echoed in MolotovGirl/Millie’s real life, too.
当然，Free Guyis loaded with non-stop jokes and visual gags—including one that makes me pine for the days of sold-out theaters, if only to absorb a large crowd’s reaction—but the sweet, heartfelt underpinning of the story balances out the rapid-fire comedy. It’s a best of both worlds scenario for Ryan Reynolds, letting him play the action guy he’s become known for, while also tapping into his rom-com roots and letting him play a lighter, sweeter character. And Jodie Comer looks like she’s having fun, playing the kind of character Villanelle might imagine herself as within the world of杀死夏娃.Free Guyis free-wheeling and irreverent, a mash-up of game and movie references and jokes, and it has a surprisingly genuine heart of gold.
Free Guyis now in theaters.
