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A movie about making movies always has a sort of bizarre allure to it and Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man, first appearing in 1980, is not a stranger to either quality. Praised and, in fact, buoyed by print critics back in the day, the film didn’t entirely disappear from America’s consciousness as quickly as it could have. That being said, the film is a bit of a letdown as it presents a fascinating idea – perception as uncertainty inside the movie industry – yet can’t quite deliver the satisfying tale it thinks it has told.
When escaped prisoner Cameron (Steve Railsback) inadvertently causes (or does he?) a stunt man to lose his life, he – cherry-picked by the dictatorial and often hysterical director, Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole) – finds himself as the new stunt man. Cross agrees to keep Cameron safe from the heat, if he can complete each and every stunt and keep his sanity under Cross’s rule. Cameron, after falling in love with the leading lady - Nina Franklin (Barbara Hershey) – becomes quite convinced that Cross is trying to kill him out of sheer jealousy.
You can see the potential that this idea has. It screams masterpiece and, on one level, it certainly is a masterpiece. Its fatal flaw is that its director actually believes his film is a masterpiece so Rush – whose career is a bit of an interesting story in itself – doesn’t really feel the need to explain exactly what the hell is going on at times. Too much is left for us to ponder over and it is quite distracting to the meaning and pacing of the film; lots of spacey filler and lots of inconsequential material to wade through.
Yet when the The Stunt Man – through rapid fire edits and surreal moments of escapism – merges the real life with the movie they are filming, cinematic magic becomes palpable. It’s certainly very rich and powerful with moments that rival material from Christopher Nolan and the like. And what more can be said of O’Toole’s brilliant performance as the tyrannical director? He was nominated for the performance and he certainly earns that nomination with moments of pure demonic delight. Unfortunately, the demonic side of Cross isn’t explored as fully as it could have been and merely registers as a minor hiccup in the character. This results in another of the film’s flaws; its characters betray their own intelligence in that they remain rather flat … when we know they are round.
With too much getting nudged away by ‘whatever’ moments (judged so by the characters), the perception of The Stunt Man is a bit skewed in favor of Cameron (who we care the least about) and his drama as a convict-turned-hapless-stuntman-who-might-or-might-not-be-killed-by-the-director. The movie suffers from a bit of bi-polar what-to-do. For every exciting moment, there’s an equally ho-hum moment to balance the euphoric sense it so obviously wishes to share with its audience. The result?
Don’t look at the hands too closely. We won’t fall for the illusion.
MPAA Rating: R.
