First Take: Free Guy - don’t have a good day, have a great day

SYNOPSIS: A bank teller discovers that he’s actually an NPC inside a brutal, open world video game.

Screen Unseen, how you continue to surprise us. Last night, Fox did national mystery screenings at every chain but Vue with the latest effort from the co-owner of Wrexham Football Club, and for a film centred around gaming… it is actually a rather good movie.

Shawn Levy of Night at the Museum fame is the man in the director’s chair for this very well paced 1 hour 55 minute love letter to all things videogames - taking elements of Ready Player One and The Truman Show and meshing them together to create a decent plot (thanks to Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn on script duties) that delivers for a lot of those key audiences. Christophe Beck is on scoring duties (and he nails it), but the real star of the show is George Richmond’s camerawork- it fits the style of the film perfectly.

Leading the cast in his usual style is Ryan Reynolds, who once again plays himself - it hasn’t got old (yet), and this style of movie seems to be his specialty. Supporting him, in her first major ‘original’ Hollywood role since Killing Eve became the sensation that it is, is Liverpool’s own Jodie Comer, who fits into this film very well, with Taika Waititi, Joe Keery, Lil Rel Howery, and plenty of cameos from the great and good of the Hollywood and YouTube/Twitch worlds for good measure.

THE VERDICT

With only two walkouts (a relatively small amount for a Screen Unseen), Free Guy won over a very harsh audience at Odeon Preston last night- with plenty of big laughs, moments for audiences young and old, and a moment when $45 billion of franchises crossover for the very first time. It’s a cracker of a film, and it should do well here in the UK.

RATING: 4/5