Review of movie RUSH. Does anyone want to read it?

I saw it. I am not entirely impressed. Does anyone want to read a 500 word review and if anybody says "yes" I'll post it tomorrow. My exp. in the film business is limited to selling one script and having one of my books optioned for a TV miniseries so it's not a "professional" review by someone currently in the film business.

 

Movie Review: RUSH

Directed by Ron Howard

Script by Peter Morgan

I measure every auto racing movie by the first one I ever saw, called The Big Wheel, starting Mickey Rooney. That was done back when (1949) they had the rear projection camera behind the driver in a mock up race car but the same basic story is in all auto racing movies—an up and coming driver takes on the name drivers, yadda yhadda with a woman thrown in there somewhere to complicate his personal life.

In fact if you read the Wikipedia summary of the plot of The Big Wheel, it sounds very familiar: “Rooney plays Billy Coy, a young man determined to follow in his father's footsteps as a race car driver. Despite the fact that his father, "Cannonball" Coy, was killed in a fiery crash during the Indianapolis 500, Billy is undaunted and manages to work his way up from race mechanic to top driver. The story follows him through the ups and downs of the racing life, from nightclub shenanigans to dragout brawls, with hairpin turns on the track in between. At one point, he's involved in a race crash, and is under suspicion for causing another driver's death. All the while the adoration of a racecar owner's daughter and the love of his mother sees Billy through his many trials. Billy eventually earns his way back onto the racing circuit, and lands a spot in the field at the "500". In the final laps, Billy drives through a wall of fire, caused by another driver's crash, and with his own car in flames, manages to finish third, but seriously burns his arms. Inspired by his determination and sportsmanship, the winning driver turns the famous Borg-Warner Trophy over to Billy.”

OK, flash forward 64 years and here I am at another racing movie. This one has a better chance of being realistic because it is based on the “true life” drama of two famous drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda, during the year 1976 when they were fighting it out for the World Championship in F1.

I liked the casting—Hunt’s character was an appropriately blonde hunk and the Lauda character was a more cerebral but not bad looking guy but did suffer from the comparison, one was movie star handsome while the other was your typical calculating nerd with two prominent front teeth that led to the nickname “rat.”

Principal actors were Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt ,Daniel Brühl as Niki Lauda, Olivia Wilde as Suzy Miller and Alexandra Maria Lara as Marlene Knaus



The characterization of the Lauda character is good, and grows throughout the movie to being a guy who is methodical to the extreme (though I couldn’t buy his conclusion that he had a 20% chance of dying during a single season of racing-- there weren’t that many GP drivers killed in a single season)

The characterizing of the womanizing of the Hunt character was played a little too safe for me, for instance I never saw a scene with him introducing his girlfriends out on the road to anyone while the wife was off in New York. Likewise there was no altercation shown between his wife and one of his playmates. Why *****-foot around? If you are going to make a movie with human drama, go foot to the floor when you are off the track as well as on!

Then too, when Lauda was severely injured, I never saw the scene I expected—where his wife rails against the safety-or lack of it—in the sport.

AS far as the personalities of the driver, the film is a good comparison between two life philosophies-- the Lauda character being all that’s rational and coldly calculating the odds and the Hunt character living life to its fullest, devil take the hindmost. I have to admit I liked the chutzpah of the Hunt character saying at one point you’ve got to not be so facts-oriented and take the time to eke out a little pleasure. It’s ironic that, in real life, he died at age 45 of a heart attack so it’s as if he knew he wouldn’t live to a ripe old age and wanted to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

They say a character in a film should have an "arc," i.e. change, throughout the film and I didn't see a great deal of that in the Lauda character though I did see a glimpse of it in the Hunt character who at one point has a confrontation with a reporter who asks just one too many insulting questions of Lauda after his face-maiming accident.



THE FILMING

I expected--with the considerably reduced size of cameras since the film Grand Prix--that there would be many more in-car shots of shifting, steering and brake and clutch pedal use, than there was. Still, in my opinion, it was about 20% better in terms of action shots than Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix but not much better in that regard than McQueen’s LeMans which was also done back in the days of bulky cameras. I don’t think RUSH is the be-all end-all of racing movies, not by a long shot. Maybe I will have to wait for one with a bigger budget than $38 million. Even Iron Man 2 had better Monaco racing action and that was a kid’s movie!

The use of period music was good, at least so said someone of the age group that remembers that music.

Another thing missing for me was a good depiction of the life style of Grand Prix drivers—their homes, their traveling, their toys –you mean to say Lauda drove for Ferrari and didn’t drive around in a Ferrari? In the Fifties Enzo would give his drivers a deal so they could be seen driving about in one of his road cars (Oddly Phil Hill refused that opportunity). I expected to see more glimpses of La Dolce Vita on the French Riviera or in other resort areas when they were not racing. All you see is racetracks and the occasional party (especially during the Lord Hesketh-sponsored part of Hunt’s career) but overall I got no sense of ambiance of the Grand Prix world, it didn’t look that glamorous to me (and I’ve run across GP drivers in posh watering holes of places like Monte Carlo—they don’t spend all of their time racing or testing). For instance, in South Africa, wasn’t there some hotel with a pool where a lot of hijinks went on? Howard has them living too monkish an existence to make the game worth the candle.

As far as the authenticity of the actual racing scenes, I didn’t see a single race car dismantled and people trying to put the engine or gearbox back together, like I have witnessed at many a race (even drag races) . I heard they had some real race cars loaned by vintage racers, but why not take a real one apart?

Overall, I expected this movie to be a giant step past Grand Prix and another giant step past LeMans and yet it doesn’t stay in my mind any more than The Mick’s Big Wheel.

Maybe they needed a bigger budget than $38 million. Maybe I’m asking for what would have cost $100 million to see up on the screen.

Oh, I think enthusiasts should definitely see it, because there’s damn few racing movies and it’s a character study worth portraying but don’t pay $9.00 to see it like I did. Wait ‘til it’s at the bargain matinee.….