{"id":895731,"date":"2026-09-14T19:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T19:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/895731\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T19:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T19:02:13","slug":"the-stunt-driver-review-ken-carters-big-jump-done-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/895731\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stunt Driver review: Ken Carter’s big jump, done justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a time when U.S.-Canadian relationships have reached lows not seen since the War Of 1812, traveling back to a competition between stuntmen Evel Knievel and Ken Carter makes the rivalry into a fun ride of reckless \u201870s energy and macho posturing. Michael Dowse\u2019s daredeviling The Stunt Driver is a comedic biopic inspired by the real-life Carter. Known as \u201cThe Mad Canadian,\u201d the thrill-seeker who made a career out of jumping cars and breaking bones. Towards the end of his run, he set his sights on a feat so wildly ambitious, most (including Knievel) said it couldn\u2019t be done. But stubborn and foolhardy as Carter was, he\u2019s confronted in this film with something he\u2019s never quite faced before: a fear that the stunt would go wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A tried-and-true stuntman who worked his way up the ranks, Carter (Jay Baruchel) is a tall, hardheaded man with an antiquated brand of masculinity and a reckless fondness for death-defying antics. For years, he\u2019s dreamed of besting Knievel\u2019s ill-fated river jump<\/a> by soaring a custom-built rocket car\u2014which Dick Keller (Ed Helms) reluctantly develops despite his initial hesitation\u2014over the St. Lawrence River, flying from the Canadian side and landing in the States, about a mile away from the launch ramp. Despite the concerns of everyone around him, including his wife Gloria (Laurence Leboeuf), Carter forges ahead in an attempt to beat his Yankee rival.<\/p>\n

Like Goon<\/a>, Dowse and Baruchel\u2019s 2011 hockey comedy, The Stunt Driver has a cheeky sense of humor about sports culture and Canadian manhood. Like a Canadian Ricky Bobby, Carter is unapologetically proud of his country and painfully earnest in his intention to win, even when the odds are against him and he doesn\u2019t quite understand what\u2019s going on around him. Despite his occasional blockheaded statement, there\u2019s an innocence to him that moves those who care about him to try and protect him from his own harebrained ideas. And like in Goon, Dowse finds a sensitive side to the tough-guy act, becoming just as invested in these jocks\u2019 camaraderie. This is especially evident in the way that the once-reluctant Keller becomes like an older brother to Carter, trying his best to make this overly dangerous attempt to jump into another country as safe as humanly possible. Despite all Carter\u2019s mythology-building bluster in interviews, he needs his team or the stunt would never happen in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dowse takes much of The Stunt Driver from real life, but puts his own humorous and sometimes sentimental spin on events, both silly and tragic. He weaves in actual footage of Carter\u2019s exploits from Robert Fortier\u2019s 1981 documentary The Devil At Your Heels<\/a>, which immerses the movie in the days of gritty feats of nerves and auto parts. In The Stunt Driver, Fortier (Joe Cobden) plays a similarly pivotal role in Carter\u2019s many botched attempts to make the impossible jump, both recording the events and checking in emotionally on Carter in a way few others knew how to do. Swinging between shameless confidence with more than a touch of narcissism and overcompensating to mask his fear, Baruchel takes a heartfelt approach to playing Carter, going beyond the one-note strong-man act to really understand why a man would regularly risk life and limb on a regular basis. To that end, Carter\u2019s frenemy Knievel (Ben Foster) is just as hot-tempered and childish despite being a similarly grizzled veteran of their niche. Both men wonder how many more years of defying death they have left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Stunt Driver plays the familiar notes of sports comedies with a touch of absurdity, which suits the larger-than-life ego of a stunt man who hated being called a daredevil. He took jumping cars dead seriously, to the point of pain and many, many injuries. The straightforward comedy rides smoothly and with a surprising soft side, even if sometimes the momentum threatens to stall out. But it\u2019s Baruchel\u2019s surprising performance that sells the misfit macho act, embodying the fear and adrenaline found when the stunt of your dreams might be your last.<\/p>\n

Director: Michael Dowse
Writer: Michael Dowse
Starring: Jay Baruchel, Laurence Leboeuf, Ed Helms, Ben Foster, Marc Beaupr\u00e9, Dan Bakkedahl, Joe Cobden
Release Date: September 25, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when U.S.-Canadian relationships have reached lows not seen since the War Of 1812, traveling back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":["post-895731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}