Director: Ron Howard
Talent: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Brühl, Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara
Release Date: 13th September 2013
This Ron Howard joint concerns itself with the fierce, real-life Formula One rivalry between the charismatic playboy James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and the calculating, professional Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), which would come to a head in the climactic 1976 season. The two drivers’ contrasting styles and personalities inform Howard’s dichotomous formal approach to this unusual biopic, which offers the adrenaline-pumping thrills of open-wheel racing in tandem with a sober message about the catastrophic dangers of the sport, and the risks to which drivers subjected themselves to in the early days of Formula One: between exhilarating reconstructions of races, for which replicas of the authentic vehicles were used, we are reminded that an average of two racers lost their lives each season at the time the film is set (today, there hasn’t been a fatal F1 accident since Ayrton Senna’s in 1994).
There is little nuance to Rush, though it manages to tell a simple story with the greatest of affection for its subjects, even if it veers into unpleasantly macho, GQ-baiting territory with its fawning depiction of ‘Hunt, James Hunt’ (as he introduces himself), and his appalling treatment of his wife Suzy Miller, played by Olivia Wilde. It is Daniel Brühl’s performance as the taciturn Niki Lauda that ought to win the most plaudits, injecting the film with a quiet then spectacular pathos in its final third, and in doing so raising something that Jeremy Clarkson will probably like into the realm of the genuinely touching.
