Rush (15.)
Directed by Ron Howard.
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl, Alexandra Maria Lara, Olivia Wilde, Stephen Mangan, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Christian McKay. 123 mins
The sport movie, like sport itself, is doomed to repeat the same small set of scenarios: underdogs triumphing against the odds, the gifted individual who bucks the system, the driven individual who succeeds through sheer will power, and the evenly matched opponents who are locked in a period of intense competition. Scriptwriter Peter Morgan seems stuck in a routine of writing head-to-head dramas set in recent history: Frost vs. Nixon, Longford vs. Hindley, Blair vs. Brown, The Queen vs. Blair and now this study of the mid-70s Formula One racing driver rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda.
Rush though has one great novelty: it is a sport’s film without a good guy. Britain’s Hunt is a reckless, feckless cavalier posh boy who is handsome, over-sexed and casually unconcerned in his dealings with lesser mortals. Hemsworth is a great Hunt - helped no doubt by having had the gentle trial run of playing the immortal, all powerful Nordic God, Thor. Hunt the Shunt is a whole different rung of imperious. Lauda is also a son of privilege, being the son of an Austrian banking family. He is a cold perfectionist with a relentless will to triumph.
At first they are so stereotypical it is as if they had wandered in off the set of Mind Your Language, but as the film follows the pair through their early days in Formula Three all the way onto the absurdly dramatic climax of the 1976 Formula One Championship, they develop into rich and complex figures. The script gently see-saws this way and that, siding with one and then the other, slowly building up what it was that made these two people admirable and by the end it is the competition rather than the winning that is important.
This is even better than the tremendous documentary Senna. It has that When We Were Kings feeling of sporting events that transcend sport. The cast is excellent, the pacing exemplary and the period detail is beautifully caught - that distinct, slightly tatty Rollerball glamour of the champagne and body bags era of motor racing when two drivers were guaranteed not to survive the season. No doubt computers were used in the making of the racing sequences but they look thrillingly realistic. The truest moment may be a time when two battling cars disappear behind a tree and when they re-emerge the overtaking manoeuvre has already been completed – that’s Formula 1.
My only hesitation in recommending it is that I am not an entirely dispassionate observer. I have fond childhood memories of waking up early on a Sunday morning trying to tune the wireless to Radio 2 (no Fivey Livey in those days) to try and find out if Hunt had snatched the championship in the Japanese Grand Prix. A mediocre film of the story would’ve thrilled me but I suspect this is an exceptional one: humorous, entertaining, excitng and moving.
Directed by Ron Howard.
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl, Alexandra Maria Lara, Olivia Wilde, Stephen Mangan, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Christian McKay. 123 mins
The sport movie, like sport itself, is doomed to repeat the same small set of scenarios: underdogs triumphing against the odds, the gifted individual who bucks the system, the driven individual who succeeds through sheer will power, and the evenly matched opponents who are locked in a period of intense competition. Scriptwriter Peter Morgan seems stuck in a routine of writing head-to-head dramas set in recent history: Frost vs. Nixon, Longford vs. Hindley, Blair vs. Brown, The Queen vs. Blair and now this study of the mid-70s Formula One racing driver rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda.
Rush though has one great novelty: it is a sport’s film without a good guy. Britain’s Hunt is a reckless, feckless cavalier posh boy who is handsome, over-sexed and casually unconcerned in his dealings with lesser mortals. Hemsworth is a great Hunt - helped no doubt by having had the gentle trial run of playing the immortal, all powerful Nordic God, Thor. Hunt the Shunt is a whole different rung of imperious. Lauda is also a son of privilege, being the son of an Austrian banking family. He is a cold perfectionist with a relentless will to triumph.
At first they are so stereotypical it is as if they had wandered in off the set of Mind Your Language, but as the film follows the pair through their early days in Formula Three all the way onto the absurdly dramatic climax of the 1976 Formula One Championship, they develop into rich and complex figures. The script gently see-saws this way and that, siding with one and then the other, slowly building up what it was that made these two people admirable and by the end it is the competition rather than the winning that is important.
This is even better than the tremendous documentary Senna. It has that When We Were Kings feeling of sporting events that transcend sport. The cast is excellent, the pacing exemplary and the period detail is beautifully caught - that distinct, slightly tatty Rollerball glamour of the champagne and body bags era of motor racing when two drivers were guaranteed not to survive the season. No doubt computers were used in the making of the racing sequences but they look thrillingly realistic. The truest moment may be a time when two battling cars disappear behind a tree and when they re-emerge the overtaking manoeuvre has already been completed – that’s Formula 1.
My only hesitation in recommending it is that I am not an entirely dispassionate observer. I have fond childhood memories of waking up early on a Sunday morning trying to tune the wireless to Radio 2 (no Fivey Livey in those days) to try and find out if Hunt had snatched the championship in the Japanese Grand Prix. A mediocre film of the story would’ve thrilled me but I suspect this is an exceptional one: humorous, entertaining, excitng and moving.
