This Ron Howard-directed auto-racing drama shares its title with a movie about drug use, and the
meaning is parallel. Racing a car at 170 mph, trying to maneuver past
other cars, provides (I suppose) a similar high, a similar level of
danger, with an added element of fear. In Cinderella Man, Howard elevated a conventional sports story by
infusing the film with a sense of time (the Depression) and place. In
this case, the settings are multiple and interchangeable, Formula One race tracks on four continents, so competition is the glue that holds the film together. British James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) began their careers around the same time (the early 1970s) and shared posh backgrounds that they had rebelled against. Hunt was an impulsive playboy, whereas Lauda was a shrewdly calculating loner whose appearance earned him the nickname “rat.” But they shared an ambition that made them natural rivals.
In reality, the two
were friendly off the track and roomed together at one point. Here,
their relationship ranges between antipathy and grudging admiration. Nonetheless, Howard uses a mutual antagonism effectively to bring out these divergent personalities. Hemsworth’s Hunt seems to be less complicated;
if you imagine “English playboy race-car driver/badboy” you can conjure
up most of the character. The Austrian is more difficult. Peter Morgan’s screenplay uses narration by the Lauda character as a framing device,
suggesting a future in which Lauda has gained perspective, but I’m not
sure what it is. (Morgan previously collaborated with Howard on Frost/Nixon, a film that artfully depicted a different kind of competition between a playboy and a dour antagonist.) Alexandra Maria Lara plays Lauda’s first wife; we can tell more about what she feels for him than the reverse. None of that is Brühl’s fault, though. He’s excellent, completely different than in the German-language roles in which I’ve seen him before. And Morgan’s dialogue is smart.
The movie concentrates most on the 1976 F1 season, which contained
enough drama that here is where one might suspect some screenwriting
embellishment. But in this area it turns out to be quite accurate. The racing scenes do a great job of providing a sense of danger
—curiously, with few if any shots from the driver’s point of view — and
less of a job of emphasizing the nature of the skills of the performers. Unlike in boxing, it’s hard to tell the competitors apart. But if Rush is not quite as moving a sports film as Cinderella Man, that’s no disgrace. Even if you don’t see the appeal of auto racing as a sport, and I don’t, this is a winner.
viewed 9/19/13 7:30 at Ritz 5; posted 9/26/13
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