There are seemingly two ways to properly come at a sports movie (we won’t count the third which are parodies like Baseketball and Dodgeball); the first is to go the time honored route of the Rocky movie that either sees a talented young rookie or a determined has-been make a bid for the gold. However, to choose that path carries the risk of being too predictable, or worse yet, too silly, as the super-familiar tropes threaten to overwhelm any new ideas the filmmaker has come up with and we realise there’s only one of two ways it can possibly end.
However, the other way may be equally as risky, but can win big if you do it right and it involves bacing your film on real events and real people – such as the genuine and legendary rivalry between F1 driver Niki Lauda and James Hunt. However, when you slap a based on true events tag on a sports movie, there’s always a danger that you’re going to limit your audience to just fans of the sport – but thankfully, Ron Howard has a backup plan: make the off track drama every bit as gripping as the on track stuff.
In 1970, toiling away in the world of Formula 3, we find two men with eerily similar backgrounds (rich families who don’t understand their passion for racing) battling it out on the track as their egos clash just as hard as their cars. However, despite all the things they may have in common, they literally couldn’t be less alike in terms of how they tackle the world. On one side we have the German, Niki Lauda, a man blessed with incredible discipline and a mind that veers into genius when it comes to technical expertise; but on the other hand the guy has a cold, stand-offish personality that’s so abrasive it could grate cheese. On the other hand we have James Hunt who swans around like the dashing, charming, bed-hopping playboy that he is primarily because he’s been loaded with an overabundance of natural talent and a daredevil attitude that bumps uncomfortably against Lauda’s near pathological caution.
Sick of scrambling around in Formula 3, Niki gathers together all the money he has and simply buys his way into Formula 1, causing Hunt to eventually follow and while the former eventually joins the Ferrari racing team, the latter manages to secure a place with McLaren, but while they soon meet the women who will be their wives, the majority drive for each man remains beating the tarmac off each other in their vehicles.
Before you know it, it’s 1976 and Lauda starts the season like the reigning champ he is, while Hunt struggles with F1 regulations and a car that won’t stop fucking up midway through the race; but a fatefull race at the German Grand Prix will soon jumble everyone’s fortunes around after a horrific crash changes everything.
However, with the rivalry between them driving both men harder than an engine the size of a photocopier, the stage is set for the last race of the season where anything can happen.
So, to make the course that Rush has to navigate even harder, not only am I not a massive fan of F1, or sports movies as a whole, but I’m not exactly enamoured of biopics either which kind of gives film something of an uphill battle to mount from the start. However, veteran director Ron Howard has been around the track more than a couple of times and thankfully is well aware of his possible limitations. Step on the accelerator or tap the brake at the wrong time and you’ve either alienated a general audience who can’t tell a McLaren from a Mercedes, or you’ve angered hardcore fans who know their F1 history better than their own family tree. Of course, Howard is far too experienced to tumble into such obvious pit falls and as a result, Rush (generically shit title aside) manages to dance between any issue by simple ensuring that the intensity of the drama matches the pulse pounding races.
In many ways, the rivalry between Lauda and Hunt is perfect cinema fodder as their opposites attract relationship seems almost too good to be true – and technically is thanks to a little rejigging and condensing of history – but while the luxurious blonde hair and roguish grin of Hunt went toe to toe with the beady eyes and overbite of Lauda, it’s their differences that help them snap together perfectly like two absurdly competitive jigsaw pieces. Not only were their looks completely the opposite of one another, but seemingly every aspect of their personalities were the complete antithesis of the others and Rush is at its absolute best whenever it puts them both in direct conflict with one another.
Embodying the conflicting speedsters are Daniel Brühl and Chris Hemsworth respectively and while MCU fans may just see the film as the Flighty Thor vs Baron Zoomo, both actors dig in to bring these opposing forces to the screen. While you could argue that Hemsworth is channeling the Odinson a bit too much when portraying the dashing Hunt (the blonde locks certainly don’t help), Brühl gets stuck in by embodying a man who in many ways could have been a tough sell to audiences. Brusk, egotistical and surprisingly off putting, any lesser director would have either made him an easy villain or a tragic hero, but Howard has bigger and better fish to fry and never truly settles on who is right and who is wrong in this battle of ideologies. Yet, Lauda is a cold fish to everyone he meets, but Hunt goes callously through women like there’s a 70s sex drought – however, Howard is careful to give his characters their time in the light of empathy. Hunt is tormented by the fact that for all his natural talent, he’ll never be as technically savvy or disciplined as his “enemy” and believes that to be a good driver is to deliberately and willfully cheat death at every corner. Alternatively, Lauda gets a whole ton of empathy after his horrendous crash in the August of 1976 that saw him particularly cooked and have to endure truly ghastly operations that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy (the vacuuming of his lungs in particular invokes the brutal medical scenes from The Exorcist).
Weirdly, as a result of all the sterling work on the main two characters, everything else, including some of the races, come off second best. Olivia Wilde and Alexandra Maria Lara have to play second fiddle to everything else that transpires and even though some of the race sequences mamage to do the job without resorting to flashy, Manga-esque CGI to accentuate the speed, the real rush here actually comes from the dance the two competitors are having with each other in every aspect of their lives.
Succeeding as a sports film and a biopic without ever pandering too much to fans of either, Howard has delivered a movie that preaches to the converted without alienating the uninitiated. However, it’s the emotional brouhaha between the two, racing gladiators that gives the racing scenes that extra bit of acceleration.
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