Got the stomach for it, Mark?
As Mission: Impossible illustrated, the M5 makes an ace stunt car – just as long as you can unleash its tyre-smoking fury without puking on your own shoes…
RIDING alongside a stunt driver in a BMW M5 is such fun. OH GOD I FEEL SICK! The way you spin round, lurching from side to side, it’s so exhilirating. STOP THE CAR, I FEEL SICK, I FEEL SICK! The constant surging and braking, turning your stomach like a cement mixer full of breakfast. OK STOP THE CAR, HERE IT COMES!
I’m here to learn, and already – after just three minutes in the passenger seat – I’ve learned I really don’t want to be a stunt driver. Unlike Matt Sherren.
Sherren is an experienced British stuntman who was recently in action in the latest Tom Cruise film, Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Like two previous instalments of the M:I franchise, Fallout features a cast of BMWs in a big corporate tie-up with Paramount. Sherren didn’t drive the BMW in the film – and no, he isn’t ‘besties’ with Tom, so no point asking for celebrity gossip. But we thought we could ask how to do a stunt in our BMW M5 long-term test car, and maybe find out what kind of person spends his whole life wanting to set his own trousers on fire.
‘It started in the careers library at school,’ Matt explains. ‘I lived in Grimsby, I had to pull two cards out of
this careers box, and I chose cameraman and stuntman. And the teacher said, “Well, that’s never going to happen.” So that was all my dreams shattered! But I played county cricket, football and swimming, then I went travelling round Australia. While I was there, I saw a live stunt show and just thought, “That’s what I want to do!” So I came home, did my training and joined the British Stunt Register. It took me five years.’
Matt makes it sound straightforward, but there’s no official stunt training course, you just have to get on and do it yourself.
‘You have to become an expert in six different disciplines, up to instructor level,’ Matt explains. ‘I looked at the syllabus and had none of the skills. Driving was on the list, and I would have loved to have done that, but it’s expensive and it wasn’t an option at the time. So I did trampolining, horse riding, scuba, swimming, fighting and a high-falling skill, which was diving. My first film was The Bourne Ultimatum. That was the first time I saw my name up on the screen.’
I ask Matt what he did in that movie. ‘Not a lot really! I shot a gun and chased a baddie down a corridor.’ But Matt’s career took off, and over the last 10 years he’s worked all over Europe, with credits in movies including Spectre, Wonder Woman and Solo: A Star Wars Story, as well as TV shows like Taboo and Game of Thrones.
More recently, Matt returned to the idea of becoming a driver. ‘Injuries go with the territory,’ he says, ‘but as you get older, you don’t bounce so much. Driving seemed like an option – though there’s a lot of energy when you smash a car up, and you can still get hurt.’
Again, with no formal training available, Matt learnt his new craft by trial and error on an airfield, between traffic cones. He started in an MX-5, moving up to a Nissan 350Z. ‘The Mazda is like a little ballerina, so delicate and light, and if you get something wrong4
it’s easy to correct. When you step up to the 350Z, the extra power is great but it can also be dangerous. If you overpower it, or get the steering wrong, you’re off.’ Not that Matt gets to drive many 350Zs or M5s in films: ‘I usually play a heavy,’ he tells me, ‘because of my baldness’ – and he usually gets handed cheap screen-fodder. For Mission: Impossible he spent two weeks in Paris driving forgettable French cheapies. ‘For stunt work, it’s often left-hand drive, front-wheel drive, lazy cars.’
So it’s a treat for Matt to drive our M5. ‘It’s a big car, with a lot of engine!’ he says admiringly, as the tyres cool and I sway, feeling green.
‘The power and torque make drifting easier, but then you’ve got to manage it – you can easily use too much power and spin out. Same with the long wheelbase – there’s more play, more leniency in the way the tail comes out, but there’s also a lot of weight moving around.’
The one thing he’s missing is a proper handbrake lever – the M5 has an electronic button. ‘The handbrake is quite a vital piece of equipment [in stunt work]. In tight areas you can just turn, a little nip of handbrake, power on and you’re in a slide.’
Without this, Matt decides to show me the reverse J-turn. Basically, you drive in reverse, whip the steering wheel, and the momentum of that big engine swings the car screeching round 180°, then you drive off, shooting AK-47s out of the back window. Easy…
Except that it isn’t. You have to reverse fast and straight, looking in your rear-view mirror, hand upside-down on the wheel at six o’clock. Then you have to be really committed in your steering input, and – as the nose swings round – you have to complete a let-goof-the-wheel, look-where-you’re-going, engage-first-gear, grab-the-steeringwhen-you’re-pointing-straight-anddrive-off-seamlessly action, all in one nauseating instant. Get it wrong in an open space like today and you get an ugly wobble-pause before driving off. Not very Tom Cruise. But get it wrong in a tight Parisian street, full of pedestrians, and there are consequences.
‘The stunt co-ordinator has to have trust in what you do,’ says Matt. ‘A lot of money is being spent on the production, and lost minutes… re-sets for takes… there’s a lot of pressure to do your job, otherwise you’re costing them money.’
And all this, while looking the part for the rolling cameras. ‘You have to act it out – you’ve got to really try to be that MI5 agent,’ Matt urges me. I glance in the mirror. I look anaemic, my eyes are watering and my expression is one of pitiful defeat. If the next instalment is called Mission: Impossible – Throw Up I’m a shoo-in.