The Stunt Man review – Peter O’Toole manages to make a mess of his gleefully deranged Hollywood satire | film

RRichard Rush’s 1980 comedy has always been one of the most distinctive elements of Peter O’Toole’s filmography, a masterful performance as an authoritarian filmmaker that earned him one of his many (unconverted) Oscar nominations. Forty-six years later, The Stunt Man in some ways feels like the b-side of Lawrence of Arabia, about someone who might certainly be crazy, and whose innate talent for command would endanger the troops more than himself.

It’s a high-concept satire of… what exactly? About the film industry with all its arrogance and arrogance? Yes, it may also be an anti-war satire – although it is a satire of cinema’s inability to be anti-war when movies have a vested interest in making war seem exciting. But black comedy and rawness are intertwined with strange, violent stabs at extended seriousness and even suffering.

O’Toole plays Eli, the imperious director responsible for a spectacular World War I action drama with exploding planes and the like, who swoops paranoidly in his helicopter and occasionally perches on a camera crane from which he will descend, like a god, to issue orders and vindictive repression. It was over budget, over schedule, and stressful; Reckless, irresponsible, and cuts corners on safety.

When a stuntman drowns driving his car off a bridge into a river, Eli looks for a way to cover up the accident so he won’t be charged with manslaughter. His prayers are answered by Cameron (Steve Railsback), a troubled Vietnam vet on the run from the police who makes blunders on set and eagerly accepts the job of stand-in man, assuming the identity of the deceased. Cameron’s natural desperation makes him brave and a natural for stunts – and the skittish Eli decides he’s amused by him, and knows he can ask him to do anything and poor Cameron can’t complain. Things get complicated when Cameron falls in love with the film’s leading lady, Nina (Barbara Hershey), who has an unconsummated romantic relationship with the director himself.

In some ways, The Stunt Man is about blurring fact and fiction; For this dysfunctional movie family headed by a lunatic like O’Toole, it’s truly life in wartime. Sequences of filmmaking chaos cut right in and out of fantasy melodrama. But what’s striking about The Stunt Man are those moments that feel like documentary realism. O’Toole’s Eli presides over a long, boozy dinner (or is it lunch?) with the cast and crew in the middle of filming the way you might have done in those days. And when the first commercial is supposed to call out the word “cut” in the middle of the scene because there are only 33 feet of film left, Eli screams at him in genuine anger.

It all leads to a strange adventure for Cameron and Nina who feel imprisoned by Ellie, although Cameron’s very lengthy speech to Nina about what he did to get in trouble with the law and how he feels about her is a bit condescending. Still, it adds to the film’s sarcastic, salty flavor — plus, on the surface, the stunts seem downright dangerous.