Ryan Reynolds stars as “Blue Shirt” Guy in Free Guy. Guy is a friendly bank teller who happily tends to his daily repetitive routine along with his best friend, Buddy. What Guy doesn’t realize, is that he is a non-playable character (NPC) in an open world video game called Free City.
This all changes when Guy gets a hold of sunglasses that allow him to see Free City from a user perspective. With the help Molotov Girl, (Jodie Comer), Guy learns how to level up, and begins to change his destiny.
Outside of the game, we learn Molotov Girl is actually Millie, a game developer who is searching Free City for an internal code. She believes the code she created along with a current Soonami employee, Keys (Joe Keery) is hidden somewhere inside the game. Her mission is to find evidence to take down Soonami’s talking head, Antwan, (Taika Waititi).
Ryan Reynolds is clever and likable, with his usual great comedic timing. He pokes fun at the streaming generation with Guy’s naivety and optimism. Artificial Intelligence becoming self-aware is a dream for programmers. Teaching someone that they are the master of their own fate? Yes, please! Insert catchphrase here.
The open world of Free City is full of movie and gaming references, jokes, and cameos. My advice is to not look up the character list before seeing the movie. Half of the fun is the discovery. The in-game special effects are fantastic. Meanwhile, there’s a cute little love story. Pure entertainment.
Amongst the many promos online, there still isn’t a real-life freecity.com for a little integrated marketing spinoff. That being said, the studios are already committing to Free Guy 2. So there’s still time to stake some corporate-sponsored land on that blockchain. Hint, hint.