David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived (2024)

This is an emotional documentary about David Holmes, now 40, was Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double on the Harry Potter movies until he broke his neck during the filming of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. The two were children when the filming began and as the filming of the books was more or less continually over a decade, the cast and crew knew each well, and some formed friendships. This is a look back over how that happened and then a sobering look at what the present holds. First, there are the extraordinary good times, when a short kid from Essex found his way, via youth gymnastics, to movie stunt work. Holmes was a few years older than Radcliffe when they began work on the Potter franchise, so he became a cross between an elder brother and a personal trainer, schooling Radcliffe on how to make his physical work more convincing, while also teaching him and everyone in earshot how to enjoy life to the maximum by hurling yourself at it at full speed. The side-by-side footage of Holmes performing a stunt, then Radcliffe doing a safer version of it, is a fascinating insight into how action sequences come together. Then disaster strikes and Holmes has a severe accident on set and is left paralyzed. The film then shifts to the relationships that Holmes’s has maintained since then. Radcliffe is open and articulate on the challenges of rebuilding a relationship when the shared experience it has been built on has not just been brought to an abrupt end, but has been tainted too. The film is neatly wrapped up, but it also doesn’t shy away from the reality of what happened, and what the aftermath brought. Well done.