SummarySet against the glamorous golden age of Formula 1 racing in the 1970s, Rush tells the true story of the great rivalry between handsome English playboy James Hunt and his methodical, brilliant opponent, Austrian driver Niki Lauda. The story chronicles their distinctly different personal styles on and off the track, their loves and the ast...
SummarySet against the glamorous golden age of Formula 1 racing in the 1970s, Rush tells the true story of the great rivalry between handsome English playboy James Hunt and his methodical, brilliant opponent, Austrian driver Niki Lauda. The story chronicles their distinctly different personal styles on and off the track, their loves and the ast...
Rush ranks among the best movies about auto racing ever made, featuring two great performances from the leads, who capture not only the physical look of the racing legends they’re playing, but the vastly different character traits that made their rivalry, well, made for the movies.
Moviemaking at its best. The theme is magnificent, the story is great (and made even greater by the fact that life had written it), the casting is top-notch, directing, music, cinematography... you name it. This is for sure the best film about rivalry being a drive for human excellence I've seen so far.
Full-blooded on and off the track, this pedal-to-the-metal biopic is a nerve-rattling, intimate look at two sporting titans - with two career-best turns at its roaring centre.
Rush is a pretty thrilling piece of pop entertainment. It's excitingly assembled and moves like a bullet, highly engaging and nerve-wracking when it needs to be and light on its feet elsewhere.
It rarely deviates from formula, but Rush wins big, delivering the most exciting F1 footage created for film. Like Hunt, it is sexy, funny, full of thrills. Like Lauda, it is intelligent, a bit blunt, but ultimately touching.
Formula One fans who remember 1976 will no doubt delight in the film but, for those who (like me) were more interested in other things during the year of America's bicentennial, it's not only a good lesson in sports history but an entertaining two hours to spend in a theater.
The problem with car-racing movies, though, is that they are car-racing movies. Has any director found a way to spare audiences the eventual tedium of watching automobiles go around and around a track and instead capture the thrill of the sport?
Ron Howard's by-the-seat-of-your-pants aesthetic makes the slower, darker sequences feel hurried and bland, especially when stacked up next to the racing sequences.
As a fan of Formula 1, this is one of my favourite movies ever. It brilliantly showcases the rivalry between Niki Lauda (one of the all-time greats) and James Hunt (someone who had the pace, but never fully used his talent) in a dramatic but true way. The two leading men do outstanding jobs as these unique personalities and, especially Brühl, become the racer themselves. Other than these, the score is absolutely fantastic, the racing is very well portrayed and it shows the viewer what Formula 1 really is. Even though it might have had a few minor flaws, this was a perfect representation of a spectacular and dramatic story.
It's hard to make films about motor sports, it's even harder to make one and base it on real life events. Rush is a somewhat fanciful account of the build up to, and events of, the 1976 F1 Championship. A year in F1 that became legendary the second it came to a conclusion, and was a tale of two men... Niki Lauda and James Hunt, played by Daniel Bruhl and Chris Hemsworth respectively.
The narrative focusses on the fact that the two men are dynamic opposites, Hunt the flamboyant playboy who famously refers to sex as the breakfast of champions, and Lauda the deep thinking and analytically minded racer who is also naturally fast behind the wheel.
The problem with the film is that, like a real F1 season, there are highs and lows and it does get predictable. The highs being the truly awesome recreations of the best parts of the on track action and the scenes which tell the audience the motivations of the two drivers. The lows being pretty much everything else, with several scenes really dragging on and not moving the story forward in any way.
Part of the 'high' are the performances on the 'Lauda side' of the narrative. Daniel Bruhl is probably the only person who could 'be' Niki Lauda in a film, but he's matched by his on-screen girlfriend then wife Marlene, played by Alexandra Maria Lara, who is as beautiful as she's talented.
Conversely, it's hard not to like Chris Hemsworth (as an actor), but his performance is very one-note and muted. Similarly his girlfriend then wife Suzy (played by Olivia Wilde) is unable to convince as the one woman Hunt could want to walk down the aisle with.
Ultimately it's a decent enough film, the action scenes more than make up for the somewhat stilted dialogue and slower parts, but at 122 minutes it's probably about 20 minutes too long.
I didn't find it completely awful, but after 50 minutes and not finding reason to care about either Hunt or Lauda I saw no reason to continue watching it.
Firstly, all the race scenes including spectators were just ripped-off from the original race clips!!! Secondly, did Lauda used the "F" word often. Hemsworth and Burl did their job well. Overall the movie was nothing original!!!