Strong performances and race sequences

Rating: 7/10 (5 October 2013)

Ron Howard's "Rush" relates the true-life tale of two Formula One racecar drivers - Britain's James Hunt and Austria's Niki Lauda - whose intense rivalry helped to define the sport in the 1970s.
As befits a pair of arch competitors, Hunt and Lauda were polar opposites in any number of ways. Hunt, the "bad boy," was a hard-drinking, hard-living international playboy-type with a crappy marriage - his supermodel wife (Olivia Wilde) was having an affair with no less a figure than Richard Burton - while Lauda, the "good-boy," was a work-obsessed, early-to-bed homebody with a terrific marriage to a beautiful and devoted woman (Alexandra Marlena Lara). Hunt was also devilishly handsome and sexy, a fact which garnered him a bevy of overeager groupies and celebrity status, while Lauda, with his self-described "rat face," barely registered as a blip on the cultural scene. The movie chronicles their relationship - defined by incidents of high drama and near-tragedy - both on and off the track, with each developing a grudging admiration for the other's doggedness, tenacity and undeniable devotion to the sport over time.
The movie has a number of things going for it. The screenplay by Peter Morgan doesn't dumb down the characters or overdramatize the conflict between them. In addition, Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl are excellent as Hunt and Lauda, underplaying rather than grandstanding their way through their roles. And, of course, it goes without saying that the racing sequences, though truncated at times, plunge the audience right into the heart of the action in a way not available even to real-life fans of the sport, be they sitting in the stands at the track or watching at home on TV. Once again, the intimacy of the medium of film makes itself felt in a major way.
Why then the overall feeling of dissatisfaction with the film, the nagging sense that, for all the quality elements that have gone into it, the movie just doesn't amount to all that much in the end? Could it be that, when all is said and done, the story really isn't all that interesting or the characters all that compelling (Hunt's wife is given particularly short shrift in the screenplay)? Whatever it is, there is something about "Rush" that keeps us from giving ourselves over to it completely. So just enjoy the performances and car races and don't expect a life-altering experience from Howard's latest feel-good opus.