The Stunt Man (1980)

Directed by Richard Rush. Starring Steve Railsback, Peter O’Toole, Barbara Hershey, Allen Garfield, Charles Bail, Alex Rocco, Sharon Farrell, Adam Roarke, Philip Bruns. [R]

On the run from the law, sulky Vietnam vet Railsback accidentally causes the death of a daredevil stuntman who was on the job for flamboyantly-mannered film director, Eli Cross (O’Toole). Cross agrees to let Railsback “hide out” from the police on the movie set…on the condition that the athletic amateur fill in for the deceased professional on a bevy of dangerous stunts for the wild WWI epic he’s shooting. An unusual film that takes chances and toys with reality and expectations, blackly comic and perversely dramatic and (as expected) filled with lots of keen stuntwork. Some of the action scenes become far-fetched as they’re stretched out to impossible lengths for single-take measures focused on someone with stumblebum grace, but since perspective and illusion are critical to the film’s peculiar appeal, it could easily be chalked up to crossing lines between the in-movie fantasy and the filmmaking reality. O’Toole’s work is incomparable, sweeping through camera shots on his director’s crane like a hovering deity, sporting a messiah complex that lies somewhere between T. H. Lawrence and Jack, the Earl of Gurney. There’s just one problem: more constricted than intense, more dreary than surly, more exasperated than paranoid, Railsback is a dud in the primary role, and his big “breakdown” scene with leading lady Hershey drags on as he tortuously pries out his own secrets. A passion project for co-writer/director/producer Rush, roughly a decade in the making; his and Lawrence B. Marcus’ layered script was based on Paul Brodeur’s same-named novel. Stunt coordinator and sometimes-actor Charles Bail essentially plays himself: a stunt coordinator named Chuck. Garfield went credited as Allen Goorwitz.

75/100