The Stunt Man Blu-ray Review

The Movie

I remember Richard Rush's The Stunt Man being one of those real "It" movies when I was in high school, attracting a plethora of rave reviews typically reserved for rare, potential Oscar-winning blockbusters. Its greatest strength--and its ultimate downfall--might have been its blatant smarts. Here was a movie that handed the audience nothing, that instead forced us to think for two hours and ten minutes and dared us to talk about it even after the final credits.

The story follows Cameron (Steve Railsback), a fugitive who, having just eluded the cops once again, wanders into the middle of a movie location. Almost immediately, our perceptions of what we see versus what is actually happening are challenged, keeping us off balance almost to the point of paranoia, which perfectly puts us into Cameron's state of mind. He is convinced by flamboyant, wicked director Eli (Peter O'Toole in a brilliant, underappreciated performance) to alter his appearance and take the place of a recently deceased stunt man.

Eli is consumed by the demands of completing his latest film, a World War I epic, but is he willing to sacrifice Cameron's life for the sake of a shot? The young recruit is strong, brave, a quick learner and has nothing to lose, until he becomes involved with the alluring, disarming starlet (Barbara Hershey). With production wrapping imminently, and the police breathing down their necks, Cameron's next and most dangerous stunt might just be his last.

The Picture

The new 1.85:1 HD master is a huge step up from all versions I have previously seen, ideally capturing the look of Southern California circa 1980 including much of the original grain, along with a lot of detailed picture information. The colors might go a little wonky here and there, and the extent of the visible grain (and noise) might increase drastically in some shots, but the biggest problem might be the blacks, which don't always reproduce well in films of this era. They can be a hard, flat mass in many scenes, distracting from how good most of this transfer looks.

The Sound

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is also a welcome improvement, with a newfangled directionality in the remix that serves particularly well the swooping helicopters and screeching cars. There is a gentle phasing between the speakers at times but also discrete voices or gunshots behind us. Bass is surprisingly strong. Dominic Frontiere's often extremely lighthearted score has also been expanded around the high-resolution multichannel soundfield in a lovely fashion. My only complaint is minor, that the dialogue is sometimes difficult to understand, but the problem seems to lie in the original performance/recording, not the disc, although we are given no subtitles to engage.

1080p vs 1080i question

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I happened to be in BB the other day when I looked over the shoulder of a customer getting a demonstration of the 60Hz vs. 120Hz difference. They had a 1080p source into a 1080p capable TV, 32" LCD IIRC. (I don't know what the source was, "TV" or 24fps movie.) The demo was a split screen that said "120Hz On" on one side and "120Hz Off" on the other. It was presenting several slowly moving objects as they changed from one side to the other. None was rapid, and some text was included. In every case the "Off" side showed a softer or blurrier (is that a word?) image of the moving parts vs. the "On" side that was crisp and detailed. The still parts of the image were equally crisp on both sides - only the moving parts showed the blurriness. Has anyone else seen this demo at BB ?? The difference was impressive, but I think it might have been staged quite a bit! There was no evidence that I could see of "judder" (which in my understanding is the real consequence of the 3:2 pull-down of 24fps movie content with 60Hz refresh) unless that very bluriness is judder. However, I have a 52" p-capable TV (i.e., no conversion needed for a p source) with only 60Hz refresh and I have never seen an HD image that looked that "soft", when moving vs. crisp when still, even at the larger size. I have to admit, I really don't know what judder is first hand as I don't think I have ever seen it unless I just did at BB and didn't know it. If it's something else, it doesn't cause a negative reaction in me. I guess I would need someone to point judder out to me. Maybe that's what the guy at BB was doing, but again, I think it was exaggerated.

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