Movie Title: Rush
Director: Ron Howard
Date Released: September 27th, 2013
Date Seen: September 28th, 2013
Seen with: Dad
Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review
A very good movie about Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) and James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), two formula 1 drivers and the rivalry between them. We see the story of the men from the first time they ever encounter each other in Formula 3 racing, all the way up past the 1976 racing season. The movie follows the actual story of Niki Lauda and James Hunt quite well, with small differences, but unimportant. The movie does a great job of interweaving real race footage with the movie. For example, after Lauda’s crash, we see Hunt re-watching it on a TV monitor – and it is the actual footage of the real crash. They recreated the crash so well in the movie you could hardly tell, if it weren’t for the flames. The movie fire was more explosiony (but not over done) rather than gas fire. That’s probably just to to pyrotechnics creating the crash. But, the movie was great about things like this. Towards the end of the movie, rather doing the typical end movie -start credits – show the real people, the movie instead just chooses to have Daniel Bruhl giving a voice over what happened to the men in later years, cutting between the actors portraying the two men, and the actual real men.
The movie spends a lot of time focusing on the very different personalities of these two men. James, is a British party boy, who loves to just have fun and get all the ladies. Everyone, teammates, girls, competitors, media, etc. all love him. He loves to race and does it to stare death in the face. Niki, on the other hand, loves racing but is much more serious. He finds it better to be feared and respected by his competitors – and even his own team mates. He sees racing for the business that it is and wants to do well – and so he spends as much time as he can practicing. Despite the staunch opposites the men are, they are both extremely likeable. You care about what happens to both of them – and while both of them have their douchey moments, they are both still themselves. It is great to see two men who at the beginning of the movie have these strong personalities, and they maintain them throughout the movie. Yes, we get to see the faults that these personality types come with, and the issues that both of the men have, but they remain true to themselves throughout the whole movie. In the end, of course, they both offer the other a bit of advice, but they are still themselves and don’t take any shit from anyone – except each other – for it.
Daniel Bruhl and Chris Hemsworth both do a GREAT job in this movie. After seeing this movie, I started looking up some stuff, and found a documentary on Hunt and Lauda and I watched it – let me just say that, wow, Bruhl managed to get Lauda down to a T. It is amazing how good he portrayed him. From his manner of speaking, his mannerisms, the way he would smile when he did win something. Chris Hemsworth, also, does a great job of playing Hunt. There’s a lot of old videos of Hunt in the documentary that they recreated in Rush, I noticed (small things like interviews, his partyboy ways, etc.). The movie was also exceedingly well shot, the plot extremely well written, didn’t drag on, kept you engaged, and made you nervous even though you knew what was going to happen. They also have so many small details, that after having watched this documentary, I appreciate so much more. From the way that Lauda’s wife always wore her hair, to the type of fask masks the men wore, to their rituals before every race. It makes the atmosphere so much more real, and you had no problem getting sucked into the movie and thinking that you were actually there watching the real people racing. There’s even shots of races that are incredible – like the British Grand Prix. The actual footage of the race shows the Lauda in front of a race, then the cars disappearing behind a clump of trees, and when they come out, Hunt is ahead. The scene is exactly the same in the movie. It is brilliantly done.
All in all, this was a fantastic movie. It was a full 2 hours, but didn’t feel like it. The scenes were well shot, well done, history was recreated well in the races and the characters. The only reason this movie doesn’t have a higher score than an 8 is because of its rewatchability. It has maybe a two-watch limit. After that, unless you’re a huge fan of cars or dramas, I don’t see that you’d be able to watch it over and over. But, you definitely should go see it because it is very very good.
Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review
There isn’t really anything to spoil, because you probably know the history. We all know that Niki Lauda is in a horrific crash, but then comes back to race only two races later (6 weeks), despite his recently skin graphed face. So the final question is does he go to win it all? If you don’t know the history, go read it, it’s interesting.
But no, no he doesn’t win it all. He does two laps in the final race, Japan, and feels it is too unsafe to continue. So Lauda chooses to drop out of the race. Hunt goes on to win third place, which puts him with the most points – and thus winning the Formula 1 Title that year.
But the movie doesn’t end there, you see a little bit of time go by, and then the movie ends with Lauda detailing the rest of the two mens lives, in and out of racing.
Overall: 8/10
See it if you’re a fan of good dramas, races, cars,
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