Word: rushes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This is the premise of a classic thriller: a man without a past trying to survive in a house-of-mirrors world ruled by a manic, eloquent, grandly eccentric genius, a kind of prankish, omnipotent deity. But this is not enough for Rush. In its jumbled hyperactive way The Stunt Man is part corny romantic comedy, part whoop-it-up action exploitation flick, and high-brow, somewhat pretentious anti-war statement (circa Vietnam) and quickie-metaphysical study of Paranoia, Art, and the old Illusion/Reality enigma. The Stunt Man's got it all, even those big, capitalized questions of Significance, which...
...Stunt Man never comes close to being the trashy, indulgent mess it could easily have been. The movie is rescued by its director's brilliant gamesmanship; Richard Rush is a brilliant trickster who can bring a magical, dancing glow even to lackluster materials. Despite all the superfluous innuendos of Meaning, the impotent love story, the seductive but empty-headed banality of the lady-star (Barbara Hershey), and a screenplay that at times suggests that talkies were a big mistake, Rush has created a nerve-tingling celluloid magic show. Rush is a master of the infinite details of the surface...
...Stunt Man is a catalogue of optical stunts, editing stunts, camera stunts. Rush is always present playing little tricks, making a subliminal point with a telling camera angle, making some point (often lost on the viewer) with a shock cut to another scene. And he always makes sure you know he's there. We see the god-director Eli Gross flying around in a camera crane high against a bright blue sky, making grand proclamations in his Shakespearian high camp, and when he blows a bubble with his gum it pops with an immediate cut to the thunderous roar...
...this cinematographic sleight of hand would begin to irritate as hyperactive, empty artifice if it weren't for Rush's high-speed approach. The movie hurtles along with a careless, rowdy exuberance for life and the fun of movies. Rush keeps the show moving busily forward, accompanied by a giddy, carnival-like ragtime score; we don't have time to puzzle the enigmas that teem in such overabundance, but at the same time we never have time to pin down the petty annoyances. Rush's eclectic style can careen between screwball frolic and murky psychodrama with the naive self-assurance...
...STUNT MAN'S other saving grace, besides the sheer energy of Rush's technical imagination, is Peter O'Toole's madcap caricature of a visionary movie director. Things spring magically to life when he strides into the picture, all self-centered, self-conscious magnificence and deified idiosyncrasy. None of the other caricatures have near his stature and wit; indeed Rush makes them all cower in the shadows of his imperious ego, and even then he's always descending from his helicopter into their privacy or shining spotlights into their midnight trysts. He is a perverse god; he loves making grand...