Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy.

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Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy.

Universal Pictures

From the 1933 action film Lucky Devils to the 1980 comedy-thriller The Stunt Man to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, filmmakers have long delighted in turning the camera on stunt performers, those professional daredevils who risk life and limb to make action scenes look convincing.

It’s a hard, often thankless job, which is why for years people have lobbied the motion picture academy to present an Oscar for stunt work. And of course, it’s a dangerous job: Just last month, while shooting the Eddie Murphy movie The Pickup, several crew members were injured during a stunt involving two rolling cars.

There’s a lot of vehicular mayhem in the noisily diverting new action-comedy The Fall Guy, a feature-length reboot of the ’80s TV series. Ryan Gosling stars as a highly skilled stunt performer named Colt Seavers, who, despite his cynical film-noir-style voiceover, genuinely loves his job.

Colt loves movies and moviemaking, loves hurling himself off balconies and strapping himself into soon-to-be-totaled automobiles. Most of all, he loves Jody Moreno, an up-and-coming assistant director played by Emily Blunt, and she loves him right back.

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt star in The Fall Guy.

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Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt star in The Fall Guy.

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Colt works mainly as a stunt double for Tom Ryder, a world-famous movie star played by a preening Aaron Taylor-Johnson. But when Colt suffers a life-threatening injury on the set, he quits the biz in despair and ghosts Jody for more than a year while he recovers. But then he learns that Jody is directing a big-budget sci-fi movie in Sydney and wants him to be Tom’s stunt double again. Upon arriving Down Under, however, Colt finds out that Jody did not ask for him and has no idea why he’s here.

The reason for Colt’s appearance on the set is one mystery in a cheerfully nonsensical thriller plot devised by the screenwriter Drew Pearce. There’s also a body in a bathtub, an incriminating cell phone and several amusing side characters, including a busybody producer played by Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso fame.

Another key player is Colt’s best friend and stunt coordinator, Dan, played by the always excellent Winston Duke. In one endearing running gag, Colt and Dan keep quoting dialogue from classic films like The Last of the Mohicans, The Fugitive and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all of which The Fall Guy giddily tries to outdo in its sheer volume of death-defying mayhem.

Before long, Colt isn’t just performing stunts. He’s forced to put his well-honed survival skills to good use off the set, whether he’s beating up thugs in a nightclub, punching villains in a helicopter or getting tossed around in the back of a speeding garbage truck. That’s one of several set-pieces that the director David Leitch opted to shoot using practical techniques, rather than CGI — a decision that gives this stunt-centric movie an undeniable integrity.

The Fall Guy is undoubtedly a passion project for Leitch, who once worked as a stunt double for actors including Brad Pitt and Jean-Claude Van Damme. (He nods to this by giving Colt a handy canine companion named Jean-Claude.) Leitch can direct action beautifully, as he did in the Charlize Theron smash-’em-up Atomic Blonde. But he can also go too flamboyantly over-the-top, as in sloppier recent efforts like Bullet Train and Hobbs & Shaw. The Fall Guy is better than those two, but it would have been better still with cleaner action, tighter editing and a running time south of two hours.

Blunt is such a good comedian and action star that it’s a shame she doesn’t get more to do in either department; Jody may be in the director’s chair, but as a character, she’s mainly a second banana. The Fall Guy is Gosling’s picture. Unlike the brooding, taciturn stuntmen the actor played in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines, Colt is a wonderfully expressive goofball. There’s a moment here, after a fiery boat chase around Sydney Harbour, when Colt emerges triumphant from the water, clothes dripping and muscles bulging, while a euphoric cover of Kiss’ “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” surges for the umpteenth time on the soundtrack. It’s ridiculous and gloriously overwrought — and like the best-executed stunts, it comes perilously close to movie magic.

Elisabeth Moss plays British spy Imogen Salter in The Veil.

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Elisabeth Moss plays British spy Imogen Salter in The Veil.

Christine Tamalet/FX

The new FX on Hulu series The Veil is a spy show about several different spy agencies – from the United States, England and France – all after the same goal. They want to discover the details of a suspected new Sept. 11-type terrorist plot, reportedly emanating from the Middle East, and stop it before it happens.

Sometimes these organizations work together – sometimes they work against one another. But throughout, the agent who is most crucial to cracking the case is a British superspy temporarily going under the name of Imogen. She’s played by Elisabeth Moss, of Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale, and by the end of the six episodes of The Veil, I was convinced that this is Moss’ best role, and best performance, yet. She’s amazing.

As a secret agent, Imogen has plenty of secrets of her own, which unfold slowly as the miniseries progresses. She’s a damaged soul with a haunted past – which, for her latest mission, turns out to be a valuable asset. She’s been charged to locate and befriend a woman who recently surfaced in a refugee camp on the Syrian and Turkish border.

The woman, going by the name Adilah (Yumna Marwan), claims to be of Algerian descent, and from France — but several spy agencies suspect her of being the elusive mastermind behind the rumored imminent terrorist plot. Imogen’s mission is to locate Adilah, who is held under guard at the camp after being attacked and stabbed by other refugees. Imogen offers to help Adilah escape, while getting close enough to try to ascertain her true identity, motives and target.

Elisabeth Moss and Yumna Marwan are more alike than either initially suspect in The Veil.

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Elisabeth Moss and Yumna Marwan are more alike than either initially suspect in The Veil.

Christine Tamalet/FX

The terrorist Imogen is hunting is known as Djinn al Raqqa – in folklore, a shape-shifting genie who can assume any form. Is Adilah actually Djinn al Raqqa hiding in plain sight? Or is she as innocent as she claims? Imogen, a shapeshifter of sorts herself, uses all her spycraft skills to earn Adilah’s trust, by helping her in her quest to cross borders and return to Paris, where her young daughter awaits.

Their journey is fascinating, with each probing to learn the other’s secrets while protecting her own. It’s a bit like Homeland where you, the viewer, are unsure of each character’s true motives. And as the two women go off the grid and spend time with each other, avoiding all the authorities trying to locate them, their relationship keeps deepening.

In that way, The Veil is a bit like Thelma & Louise. Except, sometimes, it’s more like Thelma v. Louise. Both characters are delightfully unpredictable. In one scene, Imogen takes Adilah to a smuggler they hope will give them new passports and identities to get to Paris. Imogen’s plan is to have them pose as singers and belly dancers. But their proposed cover is at risk when the smuggler decides to test them a little by demanding that Adilah display her skills — which she does, leaving both Imogen and the smuggler suitably impressed.

These two actors are incredibly nuanced and well-matched in these roles – captivating as adversaries, and even more so if and when they decide to become allies. The writer and creator of The Veil, Steven Knight from Peaky Blinders and All the Light We Cannot See, explores their relationship brilliantly. But he also keeps escalating the terrorist plot, and following the many agents and agencies trying to crack it. One special standout here is Josh Charles, from The Good Wife and Sports Night, who is cast as an aggressive CIA agent on French soil – an ugly American in Paris. He plays his part perfectly.

Even so, The Veil, at its core, is the story of two shape-shifting survivors who are more alike than either of them suspected – and whose realization of that fact may, or may not, stop a horrifying terrorist attack. It’s quite a voyage – and quite a drama.