The Stunt Man (USA. 1980)

The hardest reviews to write are that deal with wastes of time that approach their subject matter in a very mediocre fashion (“Generic Teen Slasher Film” “Generic Romantic Comedy” “ Generic Hard-Core Bestiality Musical”. The SLIGHLTY easier but still teeth grindingly painful reviews to write are for the films that approach a MILLION subject matters and their attempt defies all my expectation. At that time, all I want to is put down a one word write up: AWESOME! *confetti shoots everywhere* because I'm not man enough of a writer to actually do the masterwork any justice.

*Takes a deep manly breath and flexes his biceps*

The Stunt-Man is a hard to qualify beast (Action? Comedy? Drama? Thriller?) but in the end it doesn’t matter because it mashes all the genres together so well we’ll just call it “Actdramcom-some” for the record.

The story of a man pretending to be a stunt-man to evade the law is the backbone of the picture but I would never say it’s the films strength. It’s the grander theme of reality-vs-fiction that really stands out and makes this one for the ages. Our hero Stuntman is the everyman (Steve Railsback) is never quite sure what’s part of the real world or what’s part of the filmic one and the audience is never brought into the loop either. We follow his_ adventures as he tries to figure it all out. Is it all part of the scene? Or is that gun loaded with real bullets? You won’t know till the main character does. Thanks to a near perfect job by director Richard Rush the audience is completely wrapped up in the intrigue from the first frame to the last. It’s also ripping comedy, with Peter O’ Toole stealing the show as the director/god-figure with a slew of quotable nuggets of wisdom to drop on the main characters/audience at the drop of the giant floating crane he sits on the whole time. For a picture with all these grand ideas you may believe that this must = slow passed and boring. Perish the thought. I’d even go so far to say that the epically mounted action scene half-way through the picture is one of the greatest I’ve seen in a LONG TIME. Yet it’s not an action film because it’s the only real action “scene”. It’s simply a building block to a greater whole. It wasn’t nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Director at the academy award for nothing.