I decided that plans or not, I would watch one 70's boxset movie a night for an entire week. Make it a theme week and drive through seven of these fuckers. So, we'll see how this goes. I am two down, now having watched Stunts.
Stunts plays out as again, a talky dramatic murder mystery much like yesterday's The Redeemer. This one is a lot more talky and more of a slow film in general than Redeemer. I will admit, early on in this review right now, I was in and out of falling asleep during the last 20 or so minutes of this. What can I say? It was pretty fucking slow, and I was tired and very warm.
Stunts. What a great name. What's this movie about? Eh, it's got stunts in it. Call it Stunts. You might as well just call your movie Movie. How about Movie: The Movie. I'm not going to google that. I bet it's an actual movie. I did google it. It is a movie. Two, actually.
Stunts isn't that bad, I don't mean to take a dump on it from the beginning. What Stunts is, and what was pretty popular in the 70's, is an examination of a sub-culture. Think about it, I guess it started in the 60's more so with Easy Rider. But then you had an examination of van culture, semi-truck culture, lots more biker culture, drug culture, and with the popularity of Evel Knievel and stuff, an examination of stuntman culture.
Stunts has a stunt go wrong in the beginning of the movie. A stuntman dangles from a helicopter, trying to attach a rope to himself. He doesn't, and falls to his death. The dead man's brother shows up later to investigate the death, but also to himself perform the stunt that killed his brother. He and his small group of stuntmen get involved in the film being made. We get some stunts, and then soon more stuntmen start dying. Clearly something is going on. Reporter B.J. and main stunt guy Glen are hot on the case, trying to figure it out, while in the meantime performing the stunts the film calls for.
It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a stunt-driven drama murder mystery. If you guessed that it has some easy to digest characters that follow basic character patterns, you're correct! There's the bottom line business man: the director of the film the stunt guys work on. There's the lone wolf semi noir hero: Glen played by Robert Forster. There's the barely developed friends/cohorts he chills with that are likable but forgettable. The reporter B.J. is the nice and lovely reporter who's obviously gonna fall for our main dude. Yeah. It's thin.
The stunts are cool, and we see a good variety of them. I do wish that they either played up the gravity of the seriousness of them, or had a bit of an explanation as to what was going on. However, on the simple ones like car races and flips and stuff, obviously that's not necessary.
The biggest problem is that at no point does any police, investigation or anything happen. In the movie and in the film-set, everyone is seemingly content to just let the stuntmen investigate the deaths. In a biker movie or something, that would make sense. It's a gang. They're probably all shady characters. But on a film set, with dozens of people connected to different parts of Hollywood or accounting or whatever, no that would not fly. Eh, minor complaint.
By far not something to check out for any huge reason, it's fun enough to keep one watching I guess. It does have some stunts in it that are fun, and the actors pull it off well. The examination of a subculture is something I do enjoy in general. It's an intriguing idea, and it's also fun to sort of get a glimpse into the movie making of the time. Seeing stuff like the older cameras, the actual destruction of vehicles and stuff, brings me back to why practical effects and older ways of making films were way more hard than movies have it now. Now ALL this shit would be CG. Fuck y'all. I'm gettin old. Now I can offically say, "back in my day". I also hate modern music.
I give Stunts....uh....2.5 again? God. Lotsa middle of the road movies lately.
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