The Stunt Driver: An All-Canadian Daredevil Movie With a Hairpin Turn from Dumb Fun to No Fun
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
He has dipped his comedy toe into other genres, like the Daniel Radcliffe rom-com The F Word, but Michael Dowse’s sweet spot has been lovable losers and hosers (Goon, FUBAR).
Add the recent Toronto International Film Festival feature The Stunt Driver to that list, with its literally certifiable hoser-hero, the late Montreal daredevil Ken Carter (Jay Baruchel). A sweetly oblivious idiot with a huge ego and some talent, the entertaining characterization by Baruchel has undertones (and a bit of the look) of Danny McBride’s downward spiraling Kenny Powers in the baseball comedy series Eastbound and Down.
Jay Baruchel as daredevil Ken Carter in The Stunt Driver
The difference is, this ’70s-set film is about as Canadian a biopic as you can imagine, up to and including constant swilling of “stubby” beers and a crew of “expensive hippies” from the National Film Board following Carter around.
The Stunt Driver is also not entirely a comedy (though the first act is hilarious). As befits a portrait of a man with a lifetime of death over his shoulder, it takes a few left turns into drama and tragedy.
The NFB interest concerns Carter’s career white whale, a preposterous plan to fly a rocket car a mile over the St. Lawrence River into a bed of roses.
The plan is a twice-the-distance one-up of Carter’s bete noir, Evel Knievel (played here by Ben Foster), and his famous rocket car attempt to fly over the Snake River Canyon. Given that Knievel failed to achieve that one, Carter could have simply succeeded in matching the distance and declared victory. But there are no halfway measures in Carter’s world. His grandiosity at first attracts the attention of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, until they realize they might end up recording a snuff film.
Carter’s wife Gloria (Laurence Leboeuf), would rather he find more mundane (and safer) work. Similar misgivings have a reverse effect on Dick Keller (a scene-stealing Ed Helms), an American rocket-car expert who, at first, wants no part of Carter’s plan, but then suffers severe guilt over the reality that refusal to add his expertise (and sanity) to the project would only increase the likelihood of Carter’s death.
It all begins as broadly comic as the concept, with Carter giving dumb and often profane speeches in front of cameras, aggrandizing his choice of career - “(the fans) live through us, so we have to live large.”
But reality (and Keller’s handle on physics and common-sense) punt the “imminent” stunt years down the road. A sense of torpor falls over the project as funds dwindle and confidence shakes. Inevitably, this affects the film, and we share the downer of a denouement that may never happen. It’s also the first time Carter is seen losing his bluster and even questioning whether he wants to go through with it.
Googling the real story would be a bad move, since the will-he or won’t-he aspect of the film is key.
I suppose it would be inappropriate to have made a full out comedy about Ken Carter, since his ill-chosen profession makes bullfighters look tame in terms of flirting with death. And yes, there is death in The Stunt Driver. There are even tears and crushingly dramatic moments.
These are not what you’re looking for in a Dowse film, and it leaves an experience that starts out on an hilarious high and ends on a lachrymose low. No good mood goes unpunished, I guess.
The Stunt Driver. Written and directed by Michael Dowse. Stars Jay Baruchel, Ed Helms and Laurence Leboeuf. In theatres Friday, September 25.