And bless him for showing
enough of the stunt work that you can appreciate how much physical work went into those fights.
The story manages to be both ancillary and confusing, and even the action sequences are so over directed that you can't appreciate the
scope of the stunt work.
That leads me into my next question - considering the love of CGI / special effects in this business, where does that leave more practical
forms of stunt work?
It was so refreshing not to see the film under so much CGI like a lot of recent Horror films, and there was a nice
amount of stunt work involved!
(King of the Rocket Men has a truly amazing mid-air chase in one of its early chapters, ending with a startlingly realistic
piece of stunt work as the rocket man flies in pursuit of a plane.)
«The
type of stunt work that she was doing was like jumping off a rope and landing on her back.
Arriving in Paris from Hong Kong at the beginning of Irma Vep, she's taken directly to Vidal, who shows her the clip from The Heroic Trio (1993) that won him over, expressing admiration for the
grace of her stunt work; when she points out that her stunt work was done by a double, the admission makes no dent in his enthusiasm.
If there is a joke, it's the casting of Zoe Bell, a professional stunt double, as herself, and the way the story forces her into an insane piece
of stunt work during the movie's climax.
Or, catch Tom Cruise's next
batch of stunt work in Mission: Impossible — Fallout, or Mark Wahlberg taking on The Raid's Iko Uwais in Mile 22.
Distilling a couple of
decades of stunt work and second - unit directing experience into 96 minutes of runtime, Stahelski and Leitch expertly deliver one action highlight after another in a near - nonstop thrill ride.
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence chase criminals down the MacArthur Causeway in a 575M that escaped unscathed from filming duties - if only because director Michael Bay's own 550 Maranello was used for
most of the stunt work.
A significant
amount of stunt work is done by Genevieve Aitken, as a double for Lake Bell and Warwick Sadler for Pierce Brosnan.
The real problem here is that director Simon Wincer (Free Willy, Quigley Down Under) is not able to deviate from the campy nature of the comic book tale, never taking anything seriously, leaving us to marvel at
some of the stunt work and special effects, while the main tale leaves us feeling distant despite the pyrotechnics.