The Stunt Man
Director: Richard Rush
Year Released: 1980
Rating: 1.0
Aside from (yet) another remarkable performance by Peter O'Toole as an uncompromising filmmaker, willing to do anything to get the perfect shot, this is pretty facile, tedious material. The philosophy-amidst-the-chaos approach doesn't work well, and the result is less clever and more confusing, not to mention seriously hampered by a lead performance that borders on laughably awful. What infuriates me is how standard narrative logic gets replaced with purposely-incoherent leap-frogging from one strange situation to another - in order to reinforce the underlying theme of 'illusion' - and how the film basically wants to play games with you, teasing and taunting. The heavy-handed symbolism, a lot of which is Biblical - O'Toole as the devil, the main character as Jesus, Barbara Hershey as the Virgin Mary, apples, etc. - is unspeakably annoying.
