 "Peter O'Toole at his best" | 2009-09-21 |
| - Reviewed By kernnews |
I was fortunate to see this film at a press screening. The director apologized for not having enough money to have the movie in stereo. Steve Railsback was new to films. At least he was new to me. He later played Manson on TV and looked like the real Manson.
Anyway, this film is about a movie being made and Railsback gets into trouble with the cops and ends up on the movie set and into the movie. Barbara Hershey is the female lead. The extras on the DVD tells the difficulty of making a film with a low budget. It took years to complete it. But, the wonderful thing about this DVD is it is now in 5.1 surround sound. The camera work, from the beginning to the end is wonderful. The stunts in the movie, making a movie, are wonderful. I love this movie. What more can I say? |
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| "A real classic, and so unusual in so many good ways" | 2009-07-23 |
| - Reviewed By User: A356RFKNIG043B |
Rush caught the brass ring of Hollyweird and turned it into gold on this one. I saw The Stunt Man when it came out and after rewatching it last night feel that it holds up as well as any movie of its era; it still thrills and confounds and delights.
The performances are uniformly excellent. O'Toole is truly magnetic here, and you can see that he was hammered in some scenes and still pulls it off. Now that's a pro drinker! Railsback is perfect, and Hershey is mighty alluring indeed. This is the inside look at film-making that Hollywood doesn't want us to see: the egos, the drugs (watch the t-shirts and background scenes), the general insular idiocy of it all, and mainly the non-stop irony.
My only quibble is that it could be about 15 minutes shorter; it drags a bit at about 90 minutes in, and some of the shots linger a little too self-satisfiedly long, showing that even Rush was not immune to director's disease.
Nonetheless, SM is so brilliant in so many ways, and the script so tight, that this is truly a classic film. Could never figure why it didn't get the aclaim it deserved, but then again the market for truth has never been too huge. Perhaps a little too confusing for the average filmgoer, but then again that may be its greatest charm: one is never completely sure about what's going on. Just like life.
A truly unique and enduring movie. |
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| "The second disk is a delightful documentary" | 2009-04-26 |
| - Reviewed By User: A22SB9HXP1XSXF |
| I was surprised to find a second disk containing a delightful documentary. Unfortunately I went out and bought the documentary at the same time I ordered this DVD. |
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| "Peter O'Toole Tour de Force" | 2009-01-30 |
| - Reviewed By User: AVW8BI47F5W5B |
The Stunt Man is one of my all-time favorite films that no one's ever heard of.
I remember when the film very quickly came and went. There was a major war in the press between the director and the studio over how much/how little support the film was given by the studio. (It was virtually none.)
Anyway, when a filmmaker has that much passion for his project, it really pricks the interest. So I checked it out at the cinema... and wow!!
I was thrilled. This is a terrific film. There is a brilliant cast led by another superb performance by Peter O'Toole. And Barbara Hershey and Steve Railsback were also very good as the inciting lovers. Even San Diego as a beautiful backdrop gives a stunning performance, showcasing the Hotel del Coronado. (it looks much better here in color than it did in B&W in "Some Like It Hot")
The cat-and-mouse, is-it-real or is-it-Hollywood mind games created a riveting story with a surprise ending. It's a film that does everything that Hollywood just can't seem to do very well anymore.
If you haven't seen it, don't walk - run to see this brilliant film.
Highest recommendation.
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| "A Great Film Is Elevated Even Higher By A Brilliant Peter O'Toole" | 2008-05-12 |
| - Reviewed By michaelanderson65 |
By 1980, the year THE STUNT MAN was released, Peter O'Toole and his peers -- that infamous troupe of besotted British actors which included Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris -- were considered anachronisms by Hollywood. Fast living had aged them beyond their years, but more to the point, these classically trained Europeans, their mannered acting styles designed to project to the last rows of the Old Vic, seemed hopelessly dated compared with the introspective naturalism of America's latest generation of rising Method actors, led by De Niro. For the most part, this lot was best remembered by American audiences for their historical costume dramas and World War II epics of the '60s -- the kinds of films nobody was making anymore.
For O'Toole in particular, the glory days of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA were long gone -- his screen work had recently included TV movies and the big-screen abomination CALIGULA. THE STUNT MAN, an ambitious black comedy about filmmaking and paranoia, resurrected O'Toole's career and garnered him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. The irony in this is that O'Toole's comic performance as a half-mad movie director willing to risk everything to finish his film is quite purposely based on the same flamboyant dramatics that marked the actor as old-world and out of date.
O'Toole's Eli Cross has three days to wrap his antiwar film, with both his ego and his career on the line, and so he slows for nothing, not even the accidental death of a stunt man. (Real-life directors have gone as far in pursuit of their goals.) In creating his character, O'Toole has mixed in touches of such directing legends as John Huston and David Lean, for whom he had worked. But Cross is no mere parody. Rather, Cross plays as a composite of Peter O'Toole's greatest hits: there are shades of Henry II, head of that ancient English dysfunctional family, whom O'Toole had played to perfection in both BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. Well aware of the aptness of the director-as-king metaphor, O'Toole invests Cross with Henry's regal magnetism -- part warrior, part diplomat, part schemer.
But in another sly stroke of insight, O'Toole draws even more heavily on his role as Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who's certain he's Jesus Christ in THE RULING CLASS. Standing on a lofty perch above his cast and crew, Cross booms out in a voice that needs no megaphone: "We must have this shot!... I thereby order that no camera shall jam, and no cloud pass before the sun!" O'Toole grins crookedly -- he knows Cross is only half-serious -- but he plays his megalomaniacal director as a man who wants his crew to believe he is the closest thing to a deity they're likely to meet. "If God could do the tricks we can do, he'd be a happy man," Cross insists, and it's O'Toole's delivery, brimming with a crazed self-confidence, that makes this the film's tag line.
O'Toole makes Cross larger than life, a screen presence whose hypnotic charm, more than his temper, reputation or title, is the true key to the manipulative power he wields. "I can't figure it out," says one character, an on-the-lam criminal whom Cross seduces into replacing the dead stunt man and risking his life on a movie set, "I can't take my eyes off the son of a bitch." It is an apt description of Cross the director, and a fitting tribute to O'Toole the actor, who roused himself from career torpor for one glorious performance which, in recalling the best moments of a bygone era, proved how compulsively watchable an old ham can be. |
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| "A Good Film Elevated To Greatness By A Brilliant Peter O'Toole" | 2008-05-12 |
| - Reviewed By michaelanderson65 |
By 1980, the year THE STUNT MAN was released, Peter O'Toole and his peers -- that infamous troupe of besotted British actors which included Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris -- were considered anachronisms by Hollywood. Fast living had aged them beyond their years, but more to the point, these classically trained Europeans, their mannered acting styles designed to project to the last rows of the Old Vic, seemed hopelessly dated compared with the introspective naturalism of America's latest generation of rising Method actors, led by De Niro. For the most part, this lot was best remembered by American audiences for their historical costume dramas and World War II epics of the '60s -- the kinds of films nobody was making anymore.
For O'Toole in particular, the glory days of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA were long gone -- his screen work had recently included TV movies and the big-screen abomination CALIGULA. THE STUNT MAN, an ambitious black comedy about filmmaking and paranoia, resurrected O'Toole's career and garnered him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. The irony in this is that O'Toole's comic performance as a half-mad movie director willing to risk everything to finish his film is quite purposely based on the same flamboyant dramatics that marked the actor as old-world and out of date.
O'Toole's Eli Cross has three days to wrap his antiwar film, with both his ego and his career on the line, and so he slows for nothing, not even the accidental death of a stunt man. (Real-life directors have gone as far in pursuit of their goals.) In creating his character, O'Toole has mixed in touches of such directing legends as John Huston and David Lean, for whom he had worked. But Cross is no mere parody. Rather, Cross plays as a composite of Peter O'Toole's greatest hits: there are shades of Henry II, head of that ancient English dysfunctional family, whom O'Toole had played to perfection in both BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. Well aware of the aptness of the director-as-king metaphor, O'Toole invests Cross with Henry's regal magnetism -- part warrior, part diplomat, part schemer.
But in another sly stroke of insight, O'Toole draws even more heavily on his role as Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who's certain he's Jesus Christ in THE RULING CLASS. Standing on a lofty perch above his cast and crew, Cross booms out in a voice that needs no megaphone: "We must have this shot!... I thereby order that no camera shall jam, and no cloud pass before the sun!" O'Toole grins crookedly -- he knows Cross is only half-serious -- but he plays his megalomaniacal director as a man who wants his crew to believe he is the closest thing to a deity they're likely to meet. "If God could do the tricks we can do, he'd be a happy man," Cross insists, and it's O'Toole's delivery, brimming with a crazed self-confidence, that makes this the film's tag line.
O'Toole makes Cross larger than life, a screen presence whose hypnotic charm, more than his temper, reputation or title, is the true key to the manipulative power he wields. "I can't figure it out," says one character, an on-the-lam criminal whom Cross seduces into replacing the dead stunt man and risking his life on a movie set, "I can't take my eyes off the son of a bitch." It is an apt description of Cross the director, and a fitting tribute to O'Toole the actor, who roused himself from career torpor for one glorious performance which, in recalling the best moments of a bygone era, proved how compulsively watchable an old ham can be. |
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