Rush

Rush isn’t just a good racing movie. It’s an excellent film, period. Ron Howard pumps adrenaline straight into your veins with rivalry, risk, and high-stakes racing. The cinema and storytelling make the audience feel the intensity and danger of every race. Drivers are horribly disfigured and even die, forcing characters to stare their own mortality down every time they sit behind the wheel. Each character responds differently as they grapple with the peril of doing what they love. I didn’t expect to enjoy this movie, but the true story of Niki Lauda and James Hunt, told with Howard’s powerful realism and grit, was incredibly captivating. The racing scenes are beautifully filmed and framed with compelling character-driven storytelling. Be wanted, the R-rating results in some nudity and sex scenes, but if you are willing to fast forward or skip ahead, the rest of the film is worth it. I mean, Thor vs. Baron Zemo in race cars? What’s not awesome about that?

You needn't be an F1 fan, or even a sport fan in general, to really enjoy Ron Howard's look at this clash of personalities that had much of the world engrossed back in 1976. James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) - the smoking, flamboyant, womanising upstart challenging Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) the methodical, measured Champion. There is plenty of expertly created race photography including some actuality and at times you can almost smell the fumes from the pit lane; but this is essentially a well structured story about two men whose styles and attitudes to just about everything collide. Both actors deliver strongly, encapsulating the drive that kept them both risking their lives each time they got into their cars - frequently in pretty grim conditions. Were they perfectionists, egotists and/or just selfish, thoughtless and self-indulgent? What sets this apart from other sport-based biopics is that there is a bit of a real-time narrative from Lauda which lends authenticity and credibility to this recreation of their largely long forgotten vendetta. The pace is almost as frantic as one of the races, and it really packs a great deal of humanity - good and bad - into 2 hours. It is not, however, a documentary - which makes for a much more compelling piece of entertainment - but inevitably leads to a bit of creative licence. That does it no harm whatsoever.