Review of Rush

Rating: 8/10 (22 November 2014)

A true story of chalk-and-cheese Formula One drivers – one hot-headed, the other coolly calculating – locked together in a life-and-death rivalry may well seem familiar to UK filmmakers. Yet Asif Kapadia's brilliantly dramatic documentary Senna remains largely unseen by mainstream audiences in America, where it was also scandalously overlooked at the Oscars (here, it won two prestigious Baftas).
Rush Production year: 2013 Country: Rest of the world Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 123 mins Directors: Ron Howard Cast: Alexandra Maria Lara, Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl, Natalie Dormer, Olivia Wilde More on this film To fill that gap, we now have Rush, Ron Howard's multiplex-friendly account of the friction-filled relationship between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, which eerily echoes the tensions teased out between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in Kapadia's groundbreaking work. Well oiled, excitingly noisy and machine-tooled for maximum popcorn appeal, Howard's roaring drama depicts men risking life and limb in insanely dangerous circumstances, although the film itself prefers to play it safe in order to court the widest possible crowd.
Scripted by Peter Morgan, whose stage play Frost/Nixon formed the basis of Howard's previous real-life 70s grudge match, Rush paints its dueling antagonists with the most baldly oppositional black-and-white brush strokes. While Hunt is a handsome playboy with a champagne lifestyle and shagadelic reputation (his badge bears the legend "Sex: Breakfast of Champions"), Lauda is a "rat-faced" systems analyst who goes to bed early after sweating over the mathematical permutations of success.
As the former, Chris Hemsworth appears on occasion to be channeling the spirit of Austin Powers, a Merrie English swinger for whom naughty NHS nurses in stockings provide more than first aid, while saucy stewardesses offer obliging membership to the mile-high club at the drop of a polo-neck sweater. Toning down his performance only marginally from that of his hammer-swinging thunder god turn in Thor, the Australian Hemsworth is ready for action on and off the track, although his posh- school British accent sometimes slides like slick-tyred wheels on a rainy racetrack.
But it's Daniel Brühl as the rigidly locked-down Lauda who is arguably the more interesting of the two; while Hunt's boyish enthusiasms are all on the surface, the enigmatic Austrian's driving forces are more elusive, causing us to wonder about his true motives. Like his eternal adversary, he is a son of wealth rebelling against a privileged past, the common bond that joins this odd couple. But whereas Hunt wears his passions on his sleeve (or, more often, his underpants), Lauda's demons are somewhat internalized, leaving Brühl to wrestle with an emotionally distant character, something he manages with aplomb.
Juxtaposing the world views of its yin and yang heroes, Morgan's script treads a fine line between intrigue and overstatement. At its best, this makes for much entertainingly abrasive drama as the rivals' love-hate relationship provokes sparky interaction at pre-race meetings (another flag wave to Senna) and social gatherings alike. Yet such clear-cut divisions can also become an obstacle, with credibility stalling somewhat as simplification wrests control of the narrative steering wheel. It doesn't help that Austin Powers' Basil Exposition himself seems occasionally to be in the commentary box, providing the aural equivalent of subtitles for the hard of thinking.
But Howard has always been a die-hard populist, whether serving up the sparkling romantic fantasy of Splash or delving into the murky waters of psychosis in A Beautiful Mind. With such notable exceptions as the dismal The Da Vinci Code and the painfully unfunny The Dilemma, his back catalogue bears testament to his ability to blend solid thematic meat with easily digestible fluff. As such, Rush (which cost a modest $50m) may prove to be a hit with American audiences for whom the subject matter is still something of a foreign country.
Significantly, Rush also marks a return to Howard's roots, which are firmly grounded in cinematic dreams of cars. Having starred in American Graffiti, with its nostalgic evocations of drive-ins and hot rods, Howard made his directorial feature debut, in 1977, with Grand Theft Auto, a motorized romantic caper publicized with a cartoon pile-up poster proudly brandishing the tag line: "See the greatest cars in the world destroyed!" – a promise on which Rush makes good. There are comparisons, too, with Apollo 13, another 70s-set true story about men in all too flimsy machines traveling at speeds that are likely to cause them to burn up and worse. Despite the fact that (most) audiences knew how that particular adventure would end, Howard did a brilliant job of keeping the crackling tension alive by concentrating on the relations between the astronauts, his dexterity with both the mechanics of action cinema and the nuances of dialogue paying dramatic dividends. It's a winning combination that is once again to the fore in Rush.
Much credit goes to the ace team of cinematic mechanics whom Howard has assembled to fine-tune his vehicle – from Anthony Dod Mantle's typically deft and probing camera-work, always finding the unexpected perspective, to the collective efforts of the sound department, whose crunchy gear changes and booming engine throbs put the audience right there in the driver's seat. Visually, the film has an access-all-areas pass to every nook and cranny of the cars, but it's the pulsing baseline of that soundtrack that provides the dramatic chassis of the race sequences. Solid supporting performances add to the appeal, with Alexandra Maria Lara and Olivia Wilde making the most of their twin "muse" roles, while Christian McKay reminds us that we have seen too little of him since his breakthrough role in Me and Orson Welles.
Bright, brash and unashamedly formulaic, this is thrillingly accessible fare, aiming more for the straight lines of the home stretch than the tricky curves of those treacherous corners, with Howard keeping one eye always on the grandstand.