The Stunt People
CraigFirst off:
Happy birthday everyone!
As you may or may not have known, your humble reviewer is the Baron of Birthday. After years of forgetting the ages and dates of birth of close friends and family members, I decided about three years back that I would usurp the Barony, and thus all ages and dates of birth may be reassigned at my personal whim. If I waited around for an election to work out in my favor, who knows how long this might have taken. Instead, I just cut the bullshit, and did what had to be done. Now, I rule.
In a similar spirit, The Stunt People, a group of genre fanatics in California, are not waiting for Hollywood, Hong Kong, or Bombay to start investing in their work. They like action movies. They want to make action movies. They make action movies. And they rule. See how easy it is?
Budgets? Bah! Time off the day job during production? For the weak! Insurance? Nothing could possibly go wrong!
The Stunt People have done a load of short films in the five to ten minute range. Today, I’ll be looking at their longer works, Undercut, and Contour.
Undercut
Release
Retrospan. The bulk of the film is in English. Burned-in subtitles for the rest.
Starring
Eric Jacobus, Andy Leung, Todd Roy, Clyde Bruff, Cosmo Rettig, Vlad Rimburg, Ed Kahana Jr., Gavin Merrick, Mako Lau, Austin
In Brief
Eric Ninja, crime fighter for hire, has to raise prices to pay the increased ninja tax. The Governor’s office fires him, and hires Chinese Ninja Andy. Because Andy is a foreigner, he is not subject to the local ninja tax, and can bid lower than Eric.
Eric is evicted, and can no longer afford medecine for Ninja Dog. We have a light-hearted look at unemployment, underemployment, poor health care, and politics (as we watch the antics of the wasteful Governor and soon-to-be-Governor who fired Eric).
Finally, Ninja Dog passes away. Eric Ninja sets his revenge plot in motion.
Nice Shots
Eric working as a test subject for the effects of shampoo on the human eye.
Movie sign!
Where did Eric Ninja go, and how come that vending machine is walking down the sidewalk?
Ninja Vanish!
The sound design is fantastic. The final fight moves in and out of the line of sight, passing through abandoned apartment buildings. When the fight is happening off screen, the sound effects and the score are muffled. This has some old school Looney Tunes appeal.
Best Stunts
Oh, baby. The opening warm-up fights are good, but the last half of the film is a climactic showdown between Eric and Andy. The stunts are fast and furious.
Andy throws a refrigerator out a second story window, then jumps out the window, bounces off the refrigerator, and rolls.
Eric attacking Andy with the vending machine.
Andy does an off-the-wall backflip.
The kicking! The twisting! The flipping! The falling!
Disappointments
The Stunt People are all about the action scenes. Some of the dialog scenes flop, but still make the final cut.
Lighting is the natural enemy of the budget filmmaker. Good lights are expensive, take a long time to set up, and draw all sorts of attention to the fact that someone is shooting a film without a permit. Consequently, much of Undercut is underlit.
Credit where it’s due, though: They didn’t subject us to day-for-night.
Writer/Director Stephen Reedy has a role as a disgruntled police officer. The idea has some comically surreal charm, but it comes up short in practice.
Undercut is only half an hour long.
Final Analysis
Undercut was put together by a pack of genre afficionados on a budget and shooting schedule that make Clerks look like Waterworld. The result had more rough edges than smooth, but it was both witty, and action-packed. At risk of overselling the Stunt People, I can’t help but be reminded of the energy level and humor of Snake in Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master. This is a promising group. I’ll give it two and a half stars free and clear, and another star on a rent-to-own payment plan, for a total of three and a half.
Contour
Release
I can’t tell who the distributor is, or if anyone besides the Stunt People got involved, but it’s a region zero disc, and your humble reviewer likes him some region zero discs.
Starring
Eric Jacobus, Andy Leung, Ed Kahana Jr., Tyler Wang, Dennis Ruel, Ray Carbonel, Stephen Reedy, Troy Carbonel, Vlad Rimburg, Jesse Traugott, Todd Roy
In Brief
Law dabbles in high risk crime to pay off his debt to Tuak. As a day job, he runs a disreputable San Francisco tour van. Tuak, a pop-culture martial arts instructor, needs his scratch from Law to finance more cheesey training videos, so he feeds Law bad information about potentially lucrative crimes.
Worlds collide when Law picks up Alphonso de la Rossario, the Prince of Uruvia, for a tour of S.F. Law learns that Al’s parents, the King and Queen, have lost an incriminating video tape, and will pay a reward for anyone who helps recover it before the terrorists air the footage worldwide. Along for the ride is Renee Wilder, writer for Where Would Jesus Travel magazine.
The bulk of the story gets a little hazy in the retelling. In essence, it is a really strange heist film, with fragments of absurdity stitching together the fights.
In short, Law goes after the tape, the terrorists go after Prince Al, and everyone fights.
Nice Shots
Contemporary martial arts action films have to deal with the “gun problem.” In Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee asks “Why doesn’t someone just pull a .45, and BANG, settle it?” In Rumble in the Bronx, Chan taunts his enemy: “You got the guts? Drop the gun!” Films jump through all sorts of hoops to get guns kicked under the sofa, ruined in an industrial accident, emptied of bullets, or otherwise removed from the negotiating table. Contour features a real peach of a flashback scene in which we learn that Law is a complete bungler with firearms.
“Your aim sucks!”
Stephen Reedy was awkward in Undercut, and had problems in his opening scene in Coutour, but for the Tae Pho infomercial, he knocked it out of the park. If you don’t particularly care to see Contour, you should still check out the training video in the DVD extras.
“Does you like fight? Does you like soup?”
Watch for a single shot of Law fighting Esteban across the warehouse for about 90 seconds without a cut.
Best Stunts
Coutour stands out even next to high-budget action films for the range of fighting styles represented. Watch for Hapkido, Tae Kwon Do, Wushu, Escrima, and, of course, Tae Pho.
The pace is well-calibrated with a warm-up fight in the opening, short setpieces released as the story progresses, and a huge finish. Much of the action is in a warehouse with slick, unforgiving, concrete floors. A mid-film fight in a dojo gave Jacobus and Leung a chance to cut loose with some very impressive acrobatics.
Are you doin’ some stunt flyin’ or something?
Prince Al is hypoglycemic, and if he gets too much sugar in his system too quickly, he starts hallucinating. Al’s combat training is all from Tae Pho video tapes; Tuak is a dreadful instructor, but Al is a dreadful student. The double negative cancels out, and Al becomes a delusional ass-kicking machine. Troy swings a chain that wraps around Al’s neck. Al spins, launching the end of the chain back at Troy. Listen to the commentary track, where Troy reveals the secret technique to his reactions.
Most of the cast falls down a flight of stairs.
Triple Kicks
Check out the three-point bicycle kick.
Ray Carbonel attacks Leung, landing two feet at once, pulling back mid-air, and kicking again with his right leg.
Disappointments
There are still some lighting problems.
The Stunt People can work awfully damn fast, and at times it gets the better of them. There are some stunts that blow by so quickly that I missed some of what’s happening during my first viewing. Some Hong Kong films developed this problem, largely due to a love affiar with undercranking in the 1980s and early 90s. Your humble reviewer would suggest that the Stunt People consider a bit of slow motion when people are literally bouncing off the walls. In this shot, Esteban leaps toward Law; Law dodges to the side; Esteban’s kick hits the shelf; Esteban bounces off, and kicks again before landing. If I had seen that bounce back happen the first time through, this would be up in Best Stunts.
Final Analysis
The Stunt People live up to the promise shown in their earlier work, paying off the layaway star from Undercut, and earning three and a half additional stars for itself.
If You Like These
Head to The Stunt People on this here Internet, and take a look at some of their short films.
Scour the world for the work of Z Team Stunts, another group of action fans who turn out short films unencumbered by lavish budgets and shooting schedules.