I mean... you certainly don't get any false advertising with this thing there's a lot of stunts and there's a lot of rock! It's also barely a movie(?)
Don't get me wrong, director Brian Trenchard-Smith has enough shall we describe them as scenes and musical numbers and stunts, several of them footage taken from other movies and real-life scenarios I'll venture to guess didn't involve this filmmaker (one clip is referenced directly as a Man on Fire bit from the underrated Ozsploitation Mad Dog Morgan), and he has a game star in Grant Page as a real-life daredevil who does things like slide across a rope dangling over two different rocks many, many feet apart across a bay in Sydney simply because.... he can, and he has no fear (or so he says). But is there a story? Or real stakes or even much of a conflict? Eh! ::shrug emoji::
I think that perhaps it was for the best; I can picture another timeline where someone who was less creative or imaginative (or a full on capital H Hack) tried to fit Page into a cockamanie plot where we have to see him like but heads with a director and maybe there's a deeper romance with the journalist who is writing a profile on him and where does that go and OMG what if Sorcery loses their magic(?)
None of that is here and I'm glad we are getting what the Trenchard-Smith knows we want to see: mind-boggling, even for today death (and depth) defying stunts that sometimes look like they were done - like the one where Page is set on fire and is sent cascading off a cliff - because he was bored and wanted something to so. And he is an affable and captivating screen presence, whether he's having a simple conversation trying to explain his process (and maybe not succeeding so well but what the heck) or doing a gag like, say, making a phone call to the aforementioned woman journalist character... while hanging off of a different wire between Los Angeles apartment buildings(!)
All of this is well and good as far as a pseudo-kinda-not-really documentary about Page and his life in movies, with a mix of non-professional actors and real crew people. What is both equally exciting and less impressive is the rock group Sorcery. They are... entertaining. To a point. Putting aside the fact that I clearly should've known who they were before through a few appearances on Beavis and Butt-Head music video segments (how do we not have those butt-munches extolling their virtue of rocking while also damning them with sucking so hard?), an issue for me is so many of their songs sound so similar.
Every time we see them on stage with their requisite magic performers they kind of blend together (and they are pretty incredible if tacky acts, like a sword going through someone's body at one point).
They're fun for these little bursts, and I found the one keyboardist who insists on wearing super tight masks very funny (at one point in hilarious Airplane movie fashion he takes one off for another to be right there), but it's all second-rate Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper and Thin Lizzy and even Kiss theatrics (ok they're better than Kiss, minority opinion j know) and it reminds me why those acts were unique and innovative in their ways. And the filmmakers are trying to combine the two elements they got, Page and Sorcery, but only near the end so the acts converge on stage and so there's this dissonance between the two sides and without a throughline you're seeing a lot of... stuff happening, and that's that.
I sound like I'm complaining about a damn movie called Stunt Rock, what's wrong, should I get my head checked etc. I think that it manages to be a spectacular time capsule to a world that isn't really so far removed from today- the difference is the stuntman now *is* a Rockstar, see Jackass for proof of that as the more ribald and X rated version of this- and Trenchard-Smith has the kind of keen sense of humor that makes it so you are far from ever bored and know something else will come along that will make you jolt up and even grip your seat. Stunt Rock is a Testament to the astronomical fortitude of Grant Page and the B minus appeal of a rock band that I could see probably opened for AC/DC a few times.
If I ever do watch this again... I'm getting really really high.
Don't get me wrong, director Brian Trenchard-Smith has enough shall we describe them as scenes and musical numbers and stunts, several of them footage taken from other movies and real-life scenarios I'll venture to guess didn't involve this filmmaker (one clip is referenced directly as a Man on Fire bit from the underrated Ozsploitation Mad Dog Morgan), and he has a game star in Grant Page as a real-life daredevil who does things like slide across a rope dangling over two different rocks many, many feet apart across a bay in Sydney simply because.... he can, and he has no fear (or so he says). But is there a story? Or real stakes or even much of a conflict? Eh! ::shrug emoji::
I think that perhaps it was for the best; I can picture another timeline where someone who was less creative or imaginative (or a full on capital H Hack) tried to fit Page into a cockamanie plot where we have to see him like but heads with a director and maybe there's a deeper romance with the journalist who is writing a profile on him and where does that go and OMG what if Sorcery loses their magic(?)
None of that is here and I'm glad we are getting what the Trenchard-Smith knows we want to see: mind-boggling, even for today death (and depth) defying stunts that sometimes look like they were done - like the one where Page is set on fire and is sent cascading off a cliff - because he was bored and wanted something to so. And he is an affable and captivating screen presence, whether he's having a simple conversation trying to explain his process (and maybe not succeeding so well but what the heck) or doing a gag like, say, making a phone call to the aforementioned woman journalist character... while hanging off of a different wire between Los Angeles apartment buildings(!)
All of this is well and good as far as a pseudo-kinda-not-really documentary about Page and his life in movies, with a mix of non-professional actors and real crew people. What is both equally exciting and less impressive is the rock group Sorcery. They are... entertaining. To a point. Putting aside the fact that I clearly should've known who they were before through a few appearances on Beavis and Butt-Head music video segments (how do we not have those butt-munches extolling their virtue of rocking while also damning them with sucking so hard?), an issue for me is so many of their songs sound so similar.
Every time we see them on stage with their requisite magic performers they kind of blend together (and they are pretty incredible if tacky acts, like a sword going through someone's body at one point).
They're fun for these little bursts, and I found the one keyboardist who insists on wearing super tight masks very funny (at one point in hilarious Airplane movie fashion he takes one off for another to be right there), but it's all second-rate Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper and Thin Lizzy and even Kiss theatrics (ok they're better than Kiss, minority opinion j know) and it reminds me why those acts were unique and innovative in their ways. And the filmmakers are trying to combine the two elements they got, Page and Sorcery, but only near the end so the acts converge on stage and so there's this dissonance between the two sides and without a throughline you're seeing a lot of... stuff happening, and that's that.
I sound like I'm complaining about a damn movie called Stunt Rock, what's wrong, should I get my head checked etc. I think that it manages to be a spectacular time capsule to a world that isn't really so far removed from today- the difference is the stuntman now *is* a Rockstar, see Jackass for proof of that as the more ribald and X rated version of this- and Trenchard-Smith has the kind of keen sense of humor that makes it so you are far from ever bored and know something else will come along that will make you jolt up and even grip your seat. Stunt Rock is a Testament to the astronomical fortitude of Grant Page and the B minus appeal of a rock band that I could see probably opened for AC/DC a few times.
If I ever do watch this again... I'm getting really really high.