The Stuntman - 1980 Short Review

I am always intrigued by films that deal with film making, such as Powell's "Peeping Tom", Fellini's "8 1/2", Eastwood's "White Hunter Black Heart", Tim Burton's "Ed Wood", Spike Jonze's "Adaptation", Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" and Altman's "The Player".
All of these are great films, but all of them deal with a specific domain of film-making, such as Adaptation deals mainly with scriptwriting, The Player deals with Hollywood studio's etc...
The Stuntman however deals with stuntmen, as the name implies. This was very intriguing for I had never seen a film that dealt with stuntmen before and they were often the backbone of older action films such as Mad Max and Predator. But naturally the stars received all the praise.
But although now advanced CGI has changed the way films are made, stuntmen still play a important part and are often injured (most recently a stuntwoman was injured while filming Transformers 3 and a stunt double was injured filming the latest Harry Potter film), so I was interested in learning more about them.

This film was directed by Richard Rush who hasn't really directed anything else worth noting, and stars Peter O'Toole, Barbara Hershley and Steve Railsback. It received a very limited release even though it was nominated for several Academy Awards. But despite the limited release it received much praise from critics, some even saying it was one of the best film about film making ever made, now I disagree with this statement and with much of the praise this film received and I will explain why: