5/10
Brains vs. braun; driving by the seat of your pants vs.
driving by precision mathematics; put them together and they would most likely
make the best Formula One driver in the world.
Separately, they are party boy James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and egghead
Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl). Their
mid-‘70s rivalry sparked interest, at least internationally if not American, in
open-wheeled auto racing; a far more life-threatening sport a few decades ago
than it is now.
Heated rivalries and grudge matches spark intriguing story
lines in sports. Magic Johnson vs. Larry
Bird, Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier, and Nancy Kerrigan vs. Tonya Harding are
names that breathe fire into fierce competitions. Would any of these folks have been as good
without the other one to feed off of?
Well, Kerrigan probably would have.
The competitors in Rush are naturally polar opposites
from one another in all respects save one, their desire to win.
Starting down in the Formula Three trenches where the two
leading men development their animosity toward one another and culminating on
some of the fastest and most dangerous racetracks the world has to offer, Hunt
and Lauda are convinced their respective life philosophies are the key to
winning. Pretty boy James hops from
booze, drugs, and women into the driver’s seat.
Life is a game and humans are here to play it. Tactician Niki knows smarts and perfection
will lead to victory lane. Through a drawn
out series of smack talk and one-upmanship, these two racecar drivers could not
be mentioned in separate sentences; Lauda and Hunt were a brand name.
Rush gives us more than name-calling and fast cars though; we
also get their respective wives and off track behavior to complete their
development. James impulsively marries
top model Suzy Miller (a heavily made up Olivia Wilde) but their relationship
hides off screen until it’s time to pull the plug. Niki sort of meanders into a marriage and
even warns the girl beforehand that he can be difficult and does not want to be
happy; happiness means you have something to lose out there on the
racetrack. I was unaware drivers are so
introspective.
Hemsworth and Bruhl are a joy to watch as macho men with too
much swagger. James is always up for a
good time, but those moments before a race when he vomits his apprehension shows
a hidden vulnerability. Bruhl absolutely
knocks its out of the park as Niki Lauda and steals the show. He is strict with his crew, snobbish to
inferior drivers, and is probably not the best conversationalist at the dinner
table, but here is a man who knows exactly who he is, what he wants, and how he
is going to achieve it.
These parts, while effective in their individual scenes,
fail to make a truly effective whole though.
Director Ron Howard found a good story from writer Peter Morgan (they
worked together previously on Frost/Nixon, 2008) but there is no
punch. Niki goes through a devastating
accident suffering gruesome burns to his face, but the previews already
committed the sin of giving all of the interesting plot points away leaving
only a few crumbs behind for the audience to discover.
The racing scenes produce the adrenaline they want to out of
you and the cinematography, which is invasive enough to march right up into the
drivers’ facemasks, is laudable. There
is really something missing in Rush and I think it is in the
script. There are multiple conversations
with the required platitudes about how their respective racing styles are
effective or not or how they relish the competition, but they do not go deep
enough. Frost/Nixon showed some
of the most riveting back and forths in the last decade; it is too bad some of
that gravitas did not seep its way into Rush.
Written by: Peter Morgan
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl, Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara, Pierfrancesco Favino, David Calder, Natalie Dormer, Julian Rhind-Tutt
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