Gather ye forth to hear the epic tale of Hunt and Lauda, as told by Howard of Oklahoma!

Rating: 9/10 (22 September 2013)

Sport and the rivalry between champions has been an integral part of Western drama and culture since it's inception in ancient Greece, replete with archetypes of struggle, hubris, victory and loss, triumph and tragedy. With the advent of organised mass participation sports in the 20th century, the sports tales enjoyed a revival in popular culture, but their basic structure and purpose remained intact. "Rush" is just such a tale, taken from real life and made into an epic poem for the masses.
The sport in question is Formula 1 (The world racing league popular especially in Europe, Asia and South America but largely unknown in the USA) which has all the required thrills of speed, skill and danger as well as brilliant mavericks at the wheel, the modern day epic charioteers. The story it tells is that of the infamous 1976 season - a period when danger and death still stalked the sport in a way that has been largely erased today -and the rivalry between two legendary drivers, the Briton James Hunt and the Austrian Niki Lauda. The two came from similar backgrounds (wealthy business families) which they shunned to pursue the chequered flag. However their personalities were polar opposites, Hunt was the typical Errol Flynn style devil may care cad gay-blade and libertine, living for the girls, the booze,the adventure and the Devil take tomorrow. Lauda on the other hand was the cold, clinical rationalist technocrat who calculated everything in terms of percentages, including risk, and who treated fun and happiness as enemies of a stable existence. The media naturally played up the rivalry and turned the season into a battle between the two. Their rivalry was indeed very personal, and the two never lost an opportunity to mock or belittle the other, yet like all epic enemies they not only respected each other but needed each other, one not whole without the other, day and night, ying and yang. Like all epic tales, theirs came complete with shades of both victory and tragedy. Lauda crashed and was terribly scarred by fire during the Nurburgring race, nearly dying, yet he fought back and even returned to racing mere weeks later, still contesting the title, and despite losing to Hunt, went on to win many more championships and became a successful business mogul and technological innovator to boot. Hunt fought back against seemingly endless hurdles and setbacks to claw impossible victory with sheer guts and pluck to take the world championship, yet his wild ways destroyed his marriage and happiness then eventually his whole life, ending up dead aged just 45.
The film is a British-European one, telling a European legend, yet it has the most American of directors, Ron Howard. Surprisingly, the film is largely devoid of Howard's trademark sugariness and mawkish sentimentality save for the final coda, and even that feels strangely appropriate given the story he has told.Instead it showcases Howard's technical flare and experienced hand, telling the convergent and then concomitant stories of Hunt and Lauda, including their courtships and marriages, in just two hours in a time when even action movies with nothing to say scrape the three hour mark as a norm. His visual skill is also notable, not only in the all important Formula 1 scenes, which wisely follow Frankenheimer's example in "Grand Prix", but also in giving the film a good sense of period feel. For a cheap film, it looks great. The script by Peter Morgan also follows classical form and avoids making it a simplistic battle between a "good guy" and a "bad guy" (as many sports biographies do to their shame and detriment), instead giving us two great heroes, flaws and all.
The score comes courtesy of the legendary Hans Zimmer, and is strictly in the "Gladiator" mould (aptly enough) with epic themes laced with anthems of struggle and victory, and laments of tragedy and loss. Complementing it is a selection of fantastic songs from the period from the likes of Thin Lizzy, David Bowie, Mud, Slade, Stevie Winwood, Clara Nunes & Rosanna Fratello.
Of course everything hangs on the actors playing the mythic heroes, and here is the film's greatest strength, two well known skillful actors who also look remarkably similar to their real life counterparts. Chris Hemsworth, playing the dashing heroic Hunt with an upper class English brogue naturally evokes "Thor", yet the evocation is suitable, as both are mythic figures who start out as cads and grow into wisdom. He finds both the dash and the inner pain of the character and makes us care for him despite his many faults. Similarly, Daniel Bruhl, best known as the sniper in "Inglorious Bastards", gives us a Lauda who is cold, unlikeable, rude, very arrogant and superior, and a poor loser, yet also finds the buried spark of life in the man, a passion that is expressed in the language of mechanics but comes from a strong heart, especially in the powerful bond he has with his wife Marlene. She is played excellently by Alexandra Maria Lara, while Hunt's rather temporary wife, supermodel Suzy Miller, is played by an unrecognisable Olivia Wilde, emoting pathos for the love she hoped for but never found. The rest of the cast is well filled with excellent veteran character actors, including Pierfrancesco Favino as Ferrari teammate Clay Regazzoni and Christian McKay as Hunt's humorous aristocratic backer Lord Hesketh.
A powerful and engrossing human story, epic poem and true life chronicle, it is enjoying great popularity in Europe and elsewhere but will inevitably face problems in F1-phobic America. Let us hope it can cross this cultural barrier, as many, many US sports movies have coming in the opposite direction, and be enjoyed for the universal tale it is, well told, thrilling and uplifting.