Piece of the Action

Two of Hollywood’s greatest stuntmen have new movies opening this summer. You may have heard of Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, a.k.a. Tom Cruise, starring in something called Mission: Impossible — Fallout (July 27), in which he dangles from (and flies) helicopters, scales vertical cliff faces and leaps between the roofs of buildings.

But for true white-knuckle stunts you’ll want to check out Philip John Clapp Jr., a.k.a. Johnny Knoxville, in Action Point, which opens June 1 but was not screened for critics. I wonder why?

The man knows no fear. Inside of two and a half minutes, the trailer for the film shows him taking a cue ball to the forehead, wrestling a porcupine, flipping out of an alpine slide ride (also known by its scary German name, Sommerrodelbahn), smacked by a falling waterslide tube, and propelled down another at the business end of a fire hose. He is also fired from a giant trebuchet into the broad side of a barn, which I think may be a metaphor for something.

M:I — F was directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who also made the previous chapter, Rogue Nation. Explaining the style of the film, he said: “So I put (Cruise’s character) in a bunch of complicated moral quandaries, and I’m trying to find ways to connect them. And then, ironically, the way to connect them was through giant action scenes.”

That sounds like it could almost apply to Action Point, brought two you by the same guy who made TV’s Jackass, Jackass: The Movie, and the inventively named Jackass 3D.

His quote — “This movie was like a cartoon, stunt-wise” — may be the only time you hear the words “stunt” and “wise” in the same sentence regarding his newest movie.