Ryan Reynolds’ action comedy Free Guy is about a video game world where some random NPC guy gains self awareness. The self aware character then starts breaking routine before deciding that he wants to be as good as a player.

Guy then decides that he doesn’t like the murderous nature of his world and levels up to become a hero, gaining fame in the process. The game developers in the film ‘Sodnami’ take an interest and try stopping Guy as they believe him to be a hacker. This all leads to the developers interacting with the NPC hero as they try to hunt him down in the game, in the software and on the servers.

There’s also an overarching plot set in the movie’s ‘real’ world which involves a legal dispute over stolen game design. As a plot, the idea is quite boring until it’s revealed that the evidence is in the game. Guy sets himself on track to solving the real world problem, causing an unexpected romance that has a decent twist near the end of the movie.

Just because it’s Ryan Reynolds, it doesn’t mean that it’s the constant nonsense that we see with Deadpool. Instead we get slightly clever references to games, tropes and the criticisms we often hear about how greedy companies operate. It’s a film that can really impress the sort of video game nerds that are able to see these little bits but is a bit boring for more general comedy.

Graphically the film is quite good, using different tricks to make things appear and disappear as needed with enough colour to be reasonably appealing to actually watch.

The whole thing is held together with a nice sound track featuring including a few modern hits and an incredibly repetitive use of a Mariah Carey song which works surprisingly well.

I wouldn’t choose to watch Free Guy again unless I randomly found it when channel surfing. As something random on an afternoon it’s an alright way to waste time but it’s not really good or bad, just occasionally clever and visually decent.