dave s
Despite a handful of flaws, Richard Rush's The Stunt Man remains a fiercely original and wildly entertaining movie. While actively evading police, fugitive Cameron (Steve Railsback) stumbles into the middle of a film shoot. In order to cover for the recent death of a stunt double, director Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole) convinces Cameron to impersonate the dead man and assume his role as a stunt man. Filled with twists and turns and more than a handful of precariously choreographed stunts, the movie never lets its foot off of the pedal. O'Toole gives what could be his finest late career performance as the maniacal director, while Barbara Hershey is solid as the love interest. On the downside, the unblinking and bug-eyed Railsback proves once again that he can't act, the catchy but repetitive score eventually grows tiresome, and the fact that none of the crew reported the death of the original stunt man seems highly improbable.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Cameron (Steve Railsback), a Vietnam veteran who's wanted for attempted murder, is caught by police but escapes. Crossing a bridge, he dodges a car that seems to be trying to run him down; when he turns around, the car has disappeared. A helicopter flies close to the bridge and a man inside looks at Cameron. Later, Cameron is attracted to a movie shoot — a World War I battle scene. Afterwards, he notices a woman who walks through the set greeting the actors, then falls in the water. Cameron dives in to rescue her and is horrified when she pulls off her face — a mask. She is the movie's leading actress, Nina Franklin (Barbara Hershey), testing make-up for scenes set late in her character's life. The director, Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), the man in the helicopter, descends from the sky on his camera crane. He offers Cameron a job, explaining that their last stunt man just ran a car off a bridge. They haven't found the body, and Eli can't afford the production delays if police get involved. The police chief is aware of the accident but Eli convinces him that Cameron is the stuntman. Cameron accepts the job. Denise, the film's hair stylist, dyes Cameron's hair in order to make him resemble the leading man, Raymond Bailey, and harder to recognize. Cameron is convinced Eli is selling him out to the police but Eli reassures him that he is not. Cameron learns from Chuck, the stunt coordinator, and films a scene where he is chased across the roof of a large building and falls through a skylight into a bordello. At the same time, Cameron gets involved with Nina, who once had a romance with Eli. Eli is jealous of Cameron. The last shoot at the current location involves Cameron's most difficult stunt, driving off a bridge and escaping under water — the same scene Burt was shooting when he died. Cameron believes Eli is trying to kill him, and will use the stunt to make it look like an accident. The morning before the shoot Cameron tells Nina he planned to open an ice cream shop when he got home from Vietnam with a friend, but his friend did not want Cameron around because Cameron's girlfriend had left Cameron for the friend. Enraged, Cameron destroyed the ice cream shop. When a cop showed up Cameron knocked him out, resulting in an attempted murder charge. Nina and Cameron plan to escape together: Nina will hide in the trunk of the car, which Cameron will drive away in the morning instead of driving off the bridge...
Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus states, "The Stunt Man is a preposterously entertaining thriller with a clever narrative and Oscar-worthy (nomination, at least!) Peter O'Toole performance." Roger Ebert wrote "there was a great deal in it that I admired... but there were times when I felt cheated". He gave the film two stars but noted that others had "highly recommended" it. In an October 17, 1980, review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin noted "the film's cleverness is aggressive and cool," but concluded that although "the gamesmanship of The Stunt Man is fast and furious... gamesmanship is almost all it manages to be". Jay Scott called it "The best movie about making a movie ever made, but the achievement merely begins there. ... Imagine a picture an eight-year-old and Wittgenstein could enjoy with equal fervor." Critic Pauline Kael considered it "a virtuoso piece of kinetic moviemaking" and rated it one of year's best films. She called O'Toole's comic performance "peerless".
Re-seeing this one was hardly exciting to be honest. A disappointment as I have been wanting to re-see it for years. "The Stuntman" is a farcical b-movie and an unbalanced mish mash of comedy, drama, social satire and action adventure that happens to have the late and great Peter O´Toole in one of the main roles. The storyline is truly nothing special (the idea of making a film about a film is hardly that unique even in 1980), the editing is wobbly, we get haphazard silly scenes that drags down the film, the acting is wobbly, the dialogue is wobbly, the direction from Richard Rush and the cinematography from DOP Mario Tosi is unbalanced (the "vaseline" on the lens is hardly a trick that adds to the film) and Steve Railsback is hardly a great actor. Plus Barbara Hershey is unbalanced in her role and acting. The fact that "The Stuntman" received three Oscar nominations is a bit mind boggling to me as I can´t see how the film received them. But, that´s my opinion. Take it or leave it.
Trivia: It was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Peter O'Toole), Best Director (Richard Rush), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. However, due to its limited release, it never earned much attention from audiences at large.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
david f
This is a movie about making a movie - specifically a kind of over-the-top WWI film set almost completely in San Diego's Hotel del Coronado. Peter O'Toole plays a maniacal film director who loses a stuntman in a car crash and then has a fugitive who turns up at just the right time pretend to be the dead stuntmen to curtail a police investigation into the on set accident in which he died. The fugitive, though, is a deeply troubled and paranoid Vietnam veteran who doesn't always mix well with the dictatorial and kind of crazy film director. The conflicts in the film weren't totally clear to me, perhaps because they reflect and grew out of the psychologies of the different characters, and the action sequences were inventive but overly long and kind of over-the-top. Overall I would say it's kind of a muddle.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
not very good me and my friend fell asleep so boring
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
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delysid d
a lost piece of the puzzle
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
03/06/22
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hardy c
Ridiculous waste of talent, time and celluloid. The editing was awful, the script inept, the direction clueless and only Hershey's beauty kept me watching this. At the end though I had to concede that even that was not enough to save this turkey.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
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