Within the past decade, Ryan Reynolds has simply been playing variations of himself with nearly every role, even before his Deadpool features were green-lit. As Guy pursues Millie’s heart, he’s inspired to break his NPC routine, learning more about his individuality and true destiny to become a hero of his game. Outside of the game world, Millie is a game designer who plays Free City to find evidence of the code made by her and her programming partner Keys (Joe Keery) that she assumes was stolen by Free City's director Antwan (Taika Waititi).

He is sort of content with his life until he becomes completely smitten with a player named MolotovGirl/Millie (Jodie Comer), a top player of the game who happens to be on a mission of her own. He’s an NPC who follows the same routine every day in an open-world Saints Row-meets- Fortnite PC game titled Free City. The narrative focuses on a bank teller named Guy (Reynolds). This concept is The Truman Show meets Wreck-It Ralph or even The Lego Movie, but Free Guy succeeds on its merit as a fun and exhilarating action-comedy that is also a wonderful ode to the online multiplayer video game landscape of today. On the surface, the story is focused on an NPC (“non-playable character” for you n00bs) named Guy who learns his world is a video game and attempts to be the main character, but there’s more to the story than that. Yes, you have the recent Jumanji reboot franchise, which takes place in a vintage video game, or Wreck-It Ralph that follows a video game character through some sort of existential crisis, but Shawn Levy’s Free Guy might be the first film to fully understand the landscape of today’s video game industry.

Movies with storylines inspired by or centered around video game culture often fall into the cracks of mediocrity or don’t fully commit to their premise.

Free guy rating review