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Directed by Michael Dowse
Based on the true story of Montrealer Ken Carter, the “Mad Canadian” stunt driver who tried to jump the Saint Lawrence River in a rocket car in the mid-’70s. Carter's dream was to end his 30-year career with a big jump, a big paycheck, and mega stardom. In the process of accomplishing it, he hired a big sports manager and enlisted the best in rocket car design, with the National Film Board of Canada filming a documentary leading up to the event.
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Dowse has been one of the foremost purveyors of the sweeter, smaller and dorkier Canadian brand of performatively macho masculinity since 2002, so it’s hard to believe there was subject matter this suited to him he hadn’t done yet: a guy who had an NFB documentary made about him because he was willing to die flipping cars in front of an audience of like 100 guys in Peterborough, Ontario. I think the death wish drama itself is a little too sports movie conventional at times, and as always with this kind of movie the wife role is thankless. But Jay is great (wonderful accent and beer gut acting), the hangout humor is pretty consistent, and the recreation of the 70s documentary footage is pretty impressive.Further discussion on ep 451 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS, as part of our TIFF26 coverage.
The only part of this movie that got me going was the Rochester mention and Jay Baruchel being aggressively Canadian. The Stunt Driver is a part documentary recreation part fictional “based on a true story” drama to pad out a runtime about Ken Carter, a stunt driver from the 70’s. While I like the presentation style of incorporating documentary footage, a switch between 16mm film, digital cameras and eventually 35mm film to show the change in time and present the recreated doc footage vs the new narrative story. I found it to be tonally all over the place, the story to be repetitive and poorly paced, at 99 minutes this thing really drags in the second half. Jay Baruchel does about as good of as job as he can with this. The goofiness works, but they try to do what felt like a split personality story line at once and I just don’t think he has the chops as an actor. However, Ben Foster highlight of the film in his very minor role as Evel Kneivel. At the end of the day, I wasn’t blown away by it either way. It’s a movie, and I’ll continue to do the work I do, and people can watch this movie and make up their own mind. I’m just mad I missed the first half of Mizzou Miss State for this. But whatever, Buckeyes won and it’s Bills game day eve. 2026 On the Silver Screen2026, My Year In Movies
It follows the true story of a Canadian stunt driver attempting to jump the Saint Lawrence River in a rocket-powered car during the 1970s.
Michael Dowse directed the 2026 biographical comedy-drama.
Yes, the film adapts the real-life exploits of stuntman Ken Carter.
