Review: ‘Rush’

Not the epic biopic featuring the three-piece Canadian rock outfit that we were all hoping for, “Rush” is the story of a pair of Formula-One racers in the 1970’s who developed one of the most intense and interesting sports rivalries ever. Directed by Ron Howard with consummate skill and featuring very good lead performances from Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Daniel Brühl (Inglourious Basterds) and a tight script from Peter Morgan, “Rush” is actually better than I expected it would be, and is definitely worthwhile for people to check out.

What makes this movie work so well is that it is all based on a true story, which allows for some thinner characterization, as the real story is inherently appealing enough to carry the dramatic weight of the film. It doesn’t matter that English driver James Hunt (Hemsworth) was merely portrayed as a playboy and party animal while the German driver Niki Lauda (Brühl) was shown to be an overly serious fuddy-duddy with a penchant for pissing everyone off by being truthful to a fault; what matters is that we see these two excellent drivers push each other to the limits of their abilities in a sport that was as close to legalized Russian Roulette as any sport could get thanks to the very high death rate of drivers up to this point (the great documentary “Senna” goes into how Formula One managed to make their races much safer, but only after more tragedy hit the sport).

And really these base characterizations of these characters, while probably just a little insulting to the real life people, actually helps with the dramatic “oomph” of this movie, as Hunt and Lauda were portrayed as polar opposites whose intense rivalry was the marquee match up on any Formula One race. I mean really, how interesting would a movie be about competing racers if these guys were all hand shakes and mutual respect from the get go (which is how Hunt and Lauda actually interacted with each other in real life)? Instead it works much better to have these guys call each other assholes and set out to beat each other because they can’t stand to see the other person win, as opposed to them being friends already who actually enjoyed seeing the other person win a race (in a kind of “well if it wasn’t going to be me, at least it was HIM” kind of way).

So in “Rush” we follow James Hunt and Niki Lauda from the moment they meet each other at a lower level Formula Three race all the way through their intense rivalry during the 1976 racing season, which includes the BIG moments of their lives in between these starting and ending points, like James marrying a supermodel in a desperate attempt to settle himself down (which was treated as something of a tabloid relationship in the newspapers), or a horrible crash suffered by Lauda that nearly killed him, or their different deals with various racing companies like Ferrari and McLaren. We get the bullet points of this time period, like a great big power point presentation, and it is all so well put together that it is really interesting to watch.

Ron Howard always seems to excel at the real-life stuff, like “Apollo 13” and “Frost/Nixon,” and “Rush” is no exception. The broad strokes actually work quite well in this instance, so while there isn’t exactly a lot of nuance and subtlety throughout this film, at least all the dots are connected in a satisfying way so that the audience actually ends up caring about who would win the championship that year between the two men.

So “Rush” is a very good movie, a thrilling story about one of greatest rivalries ever in racing and in all sports in general, and even people who couldn’t care less about the sport will find much to appreciate in this well made film.