by Joseph Rossi
Ron Howard’s new film Rush is by all accounts one heck of a rush. Sorry about the pun but this film, set within the world of F1 racing, is a trippy, balls to the wall, sweaty palms, visceral experience. Yet the actor friendly Howard knows when to dial down the racing action and focus on the story and characters.
Howard, most famous for his multi – character pieces such as The Paper, Backdraft, Cocoon and Frost/Nixon, reinvents himself here, making his best movie in more then a decade. Working from a tight script from Peter Morgan, Howard puts us into the mindset of two racing icons, James Hunt and Niki Lauda, played by Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl.
The film is primarily set during the 1976 Formula One season, the year Hunt and Lauda battled it out for the championship. What I really enjoyed about Howard and Morgan’s direction is that there is no formula, no clichés. In Hollywood sports movies, a “hero” and “villain” usually duke it out until the hero character emerges victorious (see Rocky 2, 3, 4, 5 etc). Here we are dealing with a factual event so the film does not favor either competitor. What we get is the nature of the beast, the inner workings of the will and mind of the racer; what makes him tick, how he goes about getting mentally in shape for what is to be one of the most deadly sporting events in history. That is the essence of Rush.
It doesn’t matter who wins here. Howard isn’t interested in that. He’s always been a director in love with humanness. His films are full of characters that must overcome dangerous obstacles, both mentally and physically, to achieve greatness (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13). Here he puts us behind the eyes of a racecar driver. By experiencing the possibility of death at 150 miles an hour, Howard gets us to realize that we are never more human then when we are in the throes of exhilaration.
Much praise should be showered on Anthony Dodd Mantle, the films cinematographer. He manages to film the impossible. I never cared for racing films until I saw Rush. He puts the camera in places no one would think and the result is riveting.
