FREE GUY

*mild spoilers*

If I’m honest, the first FREE GUY trailer put me off. It was like a lot of surplus money being thrown at a screen... and "hey, look what we can do with our vfx budget", but to what purpose? I had to ask. Then I think somebody took heed of the negativity, and the second trailer landed, showcasing "The Dude" character (a beefcake Ryan Reynolds), and it was very funny and the film tripped into Deadpool territory and maybe it was going to be okay... And then word-of-mouth came back and suggested the film was very good.

I watched it at the weekend. It is very good! It's big and expensive, and loaded with on-screen fantasy and violence, but - and here's what makes it special - it isn't afraid to follow its theme through to its conclusion. The conclusion being that guns and violent games needn't be all we could have; we might live harmoniously, too, and that's something worth depicting and fighting for.

It's not as original as it wants to be (it blends THE TRUMAN SHOW with THEY LIVE and places it onto a TRON plot framework), but it is fast-paced and "winning", and Reynolds' charm carries it through. When Reynolds deploys his charm in the right vehicle (ie THE PROPOSAL, DEADPOOL, THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD), something magical happens and a film is energised from within by his breezy, natural-but-self-aware persona. However, when it doesn't work, Reynold's apparent absence of engagement, as such, can expose the vacuum behind a film (ie 6 UNDERGROUND).

In FREE GUY, Reynolds is an NPC (a non-player-character); an AI character whose sole purpose for existing in a game is to be run over, shot, held up, punched or killed. Reynolds, whose name is "Guy" in the game, relives the same day over and over as a Bank Teller in Free City... until something triggers a change, and he sets off to get more from life. The trigger is Jodie Comer as Molotovgirl, who walks through the world knowing more about the game than anybody else. Guy falls instantly in love with her, and wants to help her find what she is seeking.

The VFX - where cities are constructed, folded into themselves, or destroyed with God-like ease (making the astonishing fx moments of INCEPTION seem so yesterday) - are presented to our eyeballs like so many firework displays, the crunchy explosions and pixelated destruction all adding to the visual zip. Where FREE GUY wins out, though, is that the meretricious weightlessness of the violent fantasy is part of what is being explored: it wants to honour real people in the real world, and suggests this can happen only if we are content to work out what virtual worlds we are happy to create and populate. Hoorah!

I liked Jodie Comer as Molotovgirl. As an actor, she always carries some awkwardness with her that makes her interesting to watch. Unfortunately, I didn't take to Taika Waititi as the ruthless man-child games company owner, driven by greed. The Waititi schtick is wearing thin and the scenes fell flat.

There's a cheeky bit of product placement for Reynold's Aviation Gin, but this is as nothing compared to what happens at one point when the Fox production allowed in its new Disney bedmate, Marvel Studios, for a couple of visual gags.