We provide a direct proof of Cramér's theorem for geodesic random walks in a complete Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$. We show how to exploit the vector space structure of the tangent spaces to study large deviation properties of geodesic random walks in $M$. Furthermore, we reveal the geometric obstructions one runs into and overcome these by providing Taylor expansions of the inverse Riemannian exponential map, while also comparing the differential of the exponential map to parallel transport. Finally, we obtain the analogue of Cramér's theorem for geodesic random walks by showing that the curvature terms arising in this geometric analysis can be controlled and are negligible on an exponential scale.