O Substituto

This is a very funny and entertaining movie that doesn't fit into any one category. It's about a slightly crazed movie director who is making a WW1 movie in Southern California who hires a fugitive to replace his top stuntman. Peter O'Toole gives perhaps his best performance ever as the egomaniacal filmmaker who will do anything, perhaps even murder someone, in order to protect his artistic vision. The underrated Steve Railsback is good also as the paranoid Vietnam vet turned fugitive from the law. The action scenes are very funny and well-done, especially the rooftop chase. The music score is appropriately clever and matches what's happening on screen. Real-life stunt man Chuck Bail has a good part as a stunt coordinator who shows Railsback the ropes. The editing techniques help blur the line between reality and make-believe. The film is a bit too long, though, and some key scenes go on longer than necessary. These are minor complaints, however, because a film like this doesn't get made very often anymore.

One of my favorite movies of all time. Must admit that I'm a bit biased since Peter O'Toole's one of my favorite actors of all time. This movie has NEVER gotten the attention that it deserves. Maybe that's, in part, due to the difficulties involved in categorizing it. I don't even know in which section of the video store I'd start looking.

Peter O'Toole is so swell in it. I love that enigmatic character, movie director Eli Cross! Like the movie (and O'Toole, for that matter), he's so hard to cubbyhole. You like him, but you don't trust him. Like Cameron/Lucky (Steve Railsback's escaped convict character) does, you NEED to know exactly where his motives lie ... all in good time. You know Cross'll do whatever's necessary to get "the shot", but he's still got a conscience ... right? Would Cameron have been better off (read safer) just staying in jail ... hmmm?

All the action in the film circles around this question and while the viewer (and Cameron) decide what to make of Eli, it's a fun trip through the world of filmmaking (how realistic a trip, I've no idea). Great performances by O'Toole and Railsback, along with Barbara Hershey, Allen Garfield, Alex Rocco and Sharon Ferrell add so much to the suspense.

See this movie. You can feel how much fun it was for the cast to make. Look at Eli's devilish grin as he tries to soothe Lucky's worries. Try to imagine how many other movies have you sympathizing for an escaped convict. And don't worry if you don't know what to make of mad genius filmmaker Eli Cross because nobody else does either, and if they do, they ain't talkin' ... that might spoil the movie!

At the time Peter O'Toole was Academy Award nominated as Best Actor, for his portrayal of one-step-above-God-himself, Eli Cross in The Stunt Man, my movie going experience was limited to The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, Mary Poppins, and some post pubescent indulgences into the realm of Flint, Matt Helm, and James Bond.

Through the magic of video I was able to see Richard Rush's wonderful black comedy- And have never tired of it.

Had Mr. O'Toole and The Stunt Man not run headlong into the likes of Raging Bull, and Robert De Niro, I venture to say it would have garnered WINS, not just NOMINATIONS from the Academy that year.

Rent it…and while you're at it reach for `My Favorite Year' and make it a Peter O'Toole double feature.

You will not be disappointed.

You want to see Peter O'Toole channeling David Lean as the megalomaniac director trying to make a WWI epic against all odds who will stop at nothing to "get the shot"? He goes berserk at his AD ("no one yells cut at my set!"), he often descends from the top of the frame in his crane like a deus ex machina, he insists that his cameraman keep shooting even though his stunt man is drowning. His WWI film is a long string of big action pieces woven together with slapstick shenanigans, people dancing Charleston on the wings of planes and gatecrashing German bordellos.

No, scratch that. You want to see Steve Railsback with a Charles Mansonesque gleam in his eye playing the 'Nam veteran who finds himself chased by the police into the set of said WWI movie where he is turned in the spur of the moment into the stunt man who he accidentally helped kill a few minutes earlier? No one knows what he's guilty of but O'Toole takes him under his wing because he carries that same madness he's looking for in his movie, 600 bucks at a time.

No? How about a million movies rolled into one, a chaotic, rampant, insane smorsgabord that is at once a comedy about the trappings of big budget film-making, a romance between a famous actress and a halfmad Vietnam veteran, a drama about an emotionally scarred man with no future that finds himself betrayed again and can do nothing but laugh crazily about it and yell after a helicopter for his thousand bucks? All this filled with cinematic references (King Kong, Wings) and constant games with the viewer's perception of what is real and what is fiction, the lines separating real world from film-making wizardry becoming dangerously blurred.

Well, if you answered yes to one of the above, there's only one movie for you, Richard Rush's THE STUNT MAN. Nine years in the making, this is for all intents and purposes his APOCALYPSE NOW, the sprawling film that signalled the pinacle and decline of its director's career. The logistics of the production must've been a nightmare yet perfectly reflect the chaotic nature of the film. This is the kind of movie that deserves praise for just getting made. It's one of the only films I can think of that can afford soaring melodrama, political critique, black comedy and plain absurdism in the same scene and magically pull it off.

This is a work of art about the creation of a work of art. The work in this case happens to be a movie, and as with all great works of art, there is one obsessed, cruel, megalomaniacal genius at the helm. Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole) is the most vivid depiction of a Hollywood director ever captured on film. He is a true patriarch, playing father/lover/drill sergeant to his cast and crew, and they all love/hate/fear him for it. Anyone who's ever been near an actual film set can tell you how accurate the character is. But what makes this film just about the last word on the subject is Richard Rush's brilliant blurring of fantasy and reality. That, after all, is the main occupation of those who toil in the "Dream Factory" of show biz. This was director Richard Rush's dream project and it took him nine years to get it on the screen.

Although it seems nasty, the movie is wonderfully light-hearted and the outrageous stunt scenes are backed up by a joyous score by Dominic Frontiere. A long scene with Cameron running over a rooftop, as biplanes attack and enemy soldiers give chase, is the stuff of legend. There is a great comic sense of humor in watching them trip over each other, fall off and get blown up. 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. Yes, "The Stunt Man" is a deceptively-accurate look into what the most highly acclaimed directors do to get the most out of their cast & crew.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10.