What to Stream: 5 Movies Directed By Stuntmen
Like its popular predecessor, John Wick: Chapter 2 is a symphony of bloodshed orchestrated by a director who knows his way around a fake hemoglobin-filled squib. Stunt experts Chad Stahelski and David Leitch called the shots on John Wick, the original action-packed hit starring Keanu Reeves in 2014. For Wick’s second chapter, Stahelski flew solo, as Leitch has since landed the coveted job of directing Deadpool 2.
By transitioning from stunt work to filmmaking, Stahelski and Leitch are following a proud tradition that dates all the way back to the early days of the movie business, when silent screen star Buster Keaton designed, performed, and directed the stunts in pioneering comedy classics like Our Hospitality and The General. In fact, Stahelski opens the second John Wick with an explicit callback to his forefather, Keaton. If you get a kick out of watching Reeves’ hero kicking, punching, and shooting waves of bad guys, try streaming the following five stuntmen-directed features, which also feature some rock ‘em, sock ‘em action.
Smokey and the Bandit, directed by Hal Needham (1977)
An expert on cars and how to crash them, Hal Needham took pole position on the modern stuntman-to-director transition with this action-comedy favorite. After two decades of choreographing stunts in film and TV, the Tennessee-born Needham convinced his good pal, Burt Reynolds, to headline a script he had developed about a swaggering bootlegger who brings an escaped bride (Sally Field) on a cross-country beer run while Smokey, a.k.a. The Popo, a.k.a. the cops follow them at turbo-charged speeds. While their director kept his eyes trained on the lively auto action, Field and Reynolds, then a real-life couple, kept the movie on course with their easy-breezy chemistry. Needham, who passed away in 2013, would go on to helm 10 feature films over the course of his directing career — more than half of them starring Reynolds — but their first collaboration is the one that’s built to last.
(Available to rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes.)
Police Story 3: Supercop, directed by Stanley Tong (1992)
Supercop is proof positive that two martial arts experts in their butt-kicking prime — in this case Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh — are better than one. And as the architect of the duo’s mayhem, Hong Kong action legend Stanley Tong drew on his years of experience designing did-you-see-that stunts, many of which he road-tested himself before making the actors follow his dizzying, bruising choreography. Released in Hong Kong in 1992, U.S. audiences didn’t get to see Supercop (via legal means anyway) until 1996, five months after Rumble in the Bronx (also directed by Tong) made Chan as big a star in America as he was in Asia. Tong and Chan re-teamed this year for Kung Fu Yoga.
(Available to rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes)
Final Destination 2, directed by David R. Ellis (2003)
Serving as a stuntman on the sets of such ’80s action favorites as To Live and Die in L.A. and Lethal Weapon gifted David R. Ellis with a facility for staging action that he demonstrated to great effect when he choreographed the killer opening sequence from the second, and superior, entry in the Final Destination franchise. Don’t look for solid storytelling or memorable characters here — for that, watch Ellis’s follow-up, the supremely entertaining B-movie Cellular starring Chris Evans before he became Captain America — just enjoy the pleasure that the late director, who died suddenly in 2013, is obviously taking in building elaborate death traps that spring with clockwork precision.
(Available to rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes)
The Square, directed by Nash Edgerton (2008)
Aussie Renaissance Man, Nash Edgerton, wears many hats in the film industry: he’s an actor, a writer, an editor, a director, a stuntman, and a brother to Joel Edgerton (Loving, Midnight Special), who wrote and starred in his sibling’s feature directorial debut. A taut morality noir in the tradition of A Simple Plan and The Ice Harvest, The Square follows a pair of lovers who conspire to flee together from their respective spouses, making off with a cash-filled duffel bag in the process. Needless to say, things don’t go according to plan, which is bad for the characters, but gripping for those of us watching at home.
(Available to rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes)
Snitch, directed by Ric Roman Waugh (2013)
Who would have thought that an ex-stunt guy whose credits include Leonard Part 6 and Hook would become the director to coax Dwayne Johnson into delivering his best dramatic performance to date? Ric Roman Waugh’s underseen Snitch casts the stalwart Rock as a devoted father who agrees to work undercover with the DEA in order to help his son beat a drug charge. While Waugh awards Johnson a few opportunities to flex his muscles — most notably in a climactic chase sequence that, to be honest, feels like it was tacked on at the studio’s demand — the bulk of the movie requires him to be an actor, not an action star.
(Available to rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes)
‘Snitch’: Watch a trailer:
