He’s only the stuntman, but he’s stealing the show.

Fresh from his Oscar-nominated turn as Ken in Barbie, Ryan Gosling stars as a stuntman coming out of a brief hiatus and straight into a crazy conspiracy in The Fall Guy. This is a new action-thriller with the perfect dose of comedy, irreverence and romance from director David Leitch. Not only does Leitch’s directorial credits boast of hits such as Bullet Train, Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, he himself used to be a stunt performer.

In The Fall Guy, Gosling plays Colt Seavers, who, like everyone in the stunt community, gets blown up, shot, crashed, thrown through windows and dropped from the highest of heights all for people’s entertainment. And now, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, this working-class hero has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job.

At the SXSW premiere of The Fall Guy in March, Gosling gave a shout out to his own stunt performer for the film, Logan Holladay. “There is a moment in the film where he buckles me in for a stunt that he is about to do. Then I get out of the car and he pats me on the back for a stunt that he just did,” Gosling said. “What I love about this movie is in any other film, you would never know that but in this one you do. It’s an opportunity to finally acknowledge the stunt performers and the incredible contribution that they already make to movies.”

Blunt, who also just had a very successful awards season, thanks to her Oscar-nominated performance in Oppenheimer, plays Jody Moreno, director of the mega-budget movie that Colton is currently working on and also his not-so welcoming ex.

Blunt had a blast exploring the world of making action movies from the inside. “Here we show the juxtaposition of the spectacle and the reality of making movies, which is beautiful. It’s absurd and wonderful at the same time,” Blunt said. “And there is another layer of tension that comes with action films, like setting up these stunts for hours to then drop someone off a building.”

The Fall Guy is the director’s most personal film yet, a love letter to action movies and the hard-working and under-appreciated crew of people who make them. In the hands of Leitch, the film offers an exciting inside look at what it’s like to be on a huge action movie set. “It was a love letter to stunts. We knew we had to be authentic in that world,” said Leitch at the SXSW festival. He also produced the film with his producing partner and wife Kelly McCormick, along with Gosling.

Find out why The Fall Guy has gotten so much love, including from the Steven Spielberg, when the movie opens in Philippine cinemas on 1 May.