Film Forum

U.S., 1980
Directed by Richard Rush
Based on the novel by Paul Brodeur
With Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey
Approx. 131 mins. DCP. 

“The movie takes place on the set of a movie, a World War I flying daredevils-type picture of the sort that hasn't been made since THE BLUE MAX, Peter O'Toole plays the director of the film-within-the-film, supplying a heavily mannered performance that somehow succeeds in winning us over with its very unlikeliness. He's so very arch and fey that we realize no one like this could really exist-except, possibly, in real life. This movie set is a chamber of horrors that already has claimed one victim, a stuntman drowned when his car crashed off a bridge. Was his death an accident? Or is O'Toole a maniac who arranged it? Who knows? The movie deliberately teases us with the possibilities. And then the hero (Steve Railsback) stumbles into the picture and, before long, onto the picture.” – Roger Ebert

Reviews

"O’Toole nails the whimsy, ruthlessness, and poetry of a character who can be as insanely idealistic as Don Quixote or as regally manipulative as Don Corleone.”
– Micheal Sragow, Film Comment
Read the fill article here

“Working with material that could, with a few false steps, have turned into a tony reality-and-illusion puzzle, the director, Richard Rush, has kept it all light-headed and funny — it’s slapstick metaphysics.”
– Pauline Kael, The New Yorker