Beyond safety (always the most important thing), a stunt man has three goals to achieve an excellent stunt:

1) The physical act: The stunt itself. This is cinema verite at its finest. A CGI spider man can flip around and fly off of buildings and the audience is amused. But when a real person falls from a nine story building, the audience knows, and is impressed. Just watch an old Jackie Chan movie if you don't believe me. Even if its just taking a punch, the excellent stunt man takes that punch like nobody in real life knows how.

2) The tone of the film. Yes, even stunt men need to be aware of a director's vision. In a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, wild fists and acrobatic leaps are fine and appropriate. But in a film like Mystic River, the stunt man who gets hit by a car is just as important and needs to restrict his movements to look like an actual average joe being run over.

3) The physicality of the character (actor). This is as important as the physical act itself. A stunt man not only needs to look as much like the character (actor) as possible, he also needs to walk, stand, and jump like the actor. He needs to BE the actor. There's a reason movie stars are who they are. They AREN'T normal joes. They have affects, they are DISTINCT. Just look at one of the most stunt-shadowed men in cineman: John Wayne. He had a SWAGGER. Any stunt man playing John Wayne had to learn that swagger. Everybody's got some form of swagger, and the stunt man needs to use that.

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