HOOPER (1978)

Certainly best of the Burt Reynolds’ Good Ol’ Boy pics, such as they are, HOOPER applies the classic storyline of Aging Ace vs Up-and-Coming Kid (a Paul Newman favorite at the time) with Reynolds’ top-of-the-heap 42 yr-old movie stuntman taking on Jan-Michael Vincent’s 34 yr-old hotshot newbie. A mere eight-year difference where a two-decade generation gap is needed. To its credit, the script picks up on the gaffe and smartly turns the rivals into fast friends, then partners for the big stunt finale. Add in Sally Field as Burt’s worrying girlfriend; Brian Keith as her legendary stuntman dad; a very funny Robert Klein as the self-centered Hollywood director asking for impossible stunts*, and a rather too lovable mix of on-set production regulars and you should have an easy winner. (As it was commercially.) But with Hal Needham megging, it now seems barely tolerable. A truly terrible director (early gigs stunting for hack directors like Andrew McLaglen left their mark), even that stuntman background doesn’t protect him here. Physically, he knows how to plan a car crash, but as for effectively filming it? Not so much. And non-action scenes are far, far worse. An early scene with Reynolds & Field talking over each other in a manner meant to establish their tight, yet wary relationship is amateurish. (Field seems to lose interest in the film, and the film in her, after it.) Even the big car-jump finale dies on screen. Like so many stunts in the film, Needham can’t be bothered to lay out the working logistics so we can participate. He phones it in, faked in four or five grainy shots, even missing the big ‘rev up.’ Endemic of so much missing here.

DOUBLE-BILL: Two years on, Richard Rush (with Peter O’Toole & Steve Railsback) took a wild Nietzchean stab at the same subject in the messy, if entertaining THE STUNT MAN/’80.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *So what successful/pretentious/film-buff director is Klein supposed to be? Best guess is William Friedkin. While he’d just had a Hollywood comeuppance in SORCERER/’77, Needham worked for him back on the dauntingly dangerous FRENCH CONNECTION/’71.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The nicely judged opening credit sequence is a smoothly handled montage with two decades of stuntman injuries carefully wrapped & bandaged, a daily routine. Shot in near anonymous close-up (you know it’s Reynolds), it shows just the sort of film this could have been.  Did someone else direct it?  Burt?