Ryan Reynolds does a complete 180 from his crazy, embittered super-hero in DEADPOOL and offers us The Nice Guy in this blatant rip-off of so many movies that brevity prevents me from listing them all here. Ryan is a super-sweet bank teller Guy in the very popular multi-user video game, Free City. His role as a Non-Playable Character (NPC) means that he is not the avatar of some human player, but just a software-controlled secondary actor. For Guy, every day is just awesome, with the exception of the daily violent bank robbery. But alas, one day, a beautiful girl walks into his life, and the artificial intelligence programming kicks in and Guy starts to break out of his NPC programming. Instead of killing everyone, which appears to be the basis of the video game, Guy actually up-levels himself by being himself – The Nice Guy. Mayhem ensues.
FREE GUY does a good job of balancing the video game world with the real world and Taika Waititi nearly steals the show as Antoine, the evil owner of the software company that runs Free City. Jodie Komer and Joe Keery provide the real-world romance, which feels somewhat of an afterthought, but director Shawn Levy keeps the action popping and like bubblegum ice cream, this movie is surprisingly satisfying.
Available in theaters. What a concept.
