Rush review: Pumped with adrenaline and F1 action, but not quite real

By Suprateek Chatterjee

There’s something to be said about real-life incidents that are so inherently dramatic and hard to swallow, they seem scripted. Such a thing could have been said about Rush, a movie that focuses on the rivalry between Austrian F1 driver Niki Lauda and British F1 driver James Hunt, both world champions during the ‘70s.

This is a story whose crux is set in the racing season of 1976 – regarded universally as the most dramatic and controversial on record. Directed by Oscar winner Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13) and written by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), Rush is a well-paced film that pushes all the right dramatic buttons while doing justice to the sport. Moreover, Anthony Dod Mantle’s spectacular cinematography makes this one of the best looking films of the year.

It starts off with the infamous Nürburgring race that left Lauda (Daniel Bruhl, last seen in Inglourious Basterds) permanently disfigured after a near-fatal crash. Then the story segues back to when Lauda and Hunt (Chris ‘Thor’ Hemsworth) were newbie racing drivers. Both came from similarly privileged backgrounds but had opposite temperaments. Lauda was utterly disciplined and structured in his approach to life and racing (which may as well be synonymous for him). His one condition to race, at any point of time, was that the risk of death or injury should not exceed 20 percent. On the other hand, there was Hunt, the quintessential F1 playboy – a hard drinking, chain-smoking womaniser with the appearance of a Californian surfer and the body of, well, Thor. Remember, real life wrote these characters.

These events are so recent and well-documented that much of the source material is accessible through a YouTube search. In that regard, Rush gets almost everything right. Howard stages the races cleverly, mixing actual footage, CGI and extreme POV camera angles that bring out the exhilaration of being in an actual F1 car. Lauda’s horrific crash is recreated perfectly. Sure, some of it seems a little hyper-stylised – a recurring shot of fuel igniting and pistons pumping gives the film a bit of a Fast and the Furious feel – but it does nothing to spoil the experience.

Much hinges on the performances given by Bruhl and Hemsworth, and the pair don’t disappoint. Bruhl, employing a thick Austrian accent, is blunt and speaks in clipped sentences. He seems like the perfect actor to have played this role (Google a video interview of the real Niki Lauda and the resemblance is uncanny). Hemsworth, on the other hand, is a handsomer version of the actual Hunt and more likeable of the two. He plays Hunt like he was the F1 version of James Bond. If his performance is anything to go by, the folks representing Broccoli and Saltzman need look no further if they want to replace Daniel Craig.

However, the movie’s biggest trump card turns out to be its biggest — and perhaps, only — failing: despite an immunity against seeming scripted, it ends up feeling so anyway. The dramatic core of Rush is the friction between the two drivers, but this would be more effective if it didn’t rely on standard-issue trash-talk exchanges that seem too contrived. In reality, Lauda and Hunt were good friends off the track; in the film, they almost never stop glowering at each other. Certain exchanges and moments are annoyingly artificial and Hans Zimmer’s cheesy background score sounds like something he recycled from his own score to The Rock (1996), which doesn’t help.

However, Howard is Hollywood’s resident expert in directing accessible, adrenaline-filled biopics, and he is in fine form. It is his sure-handed direction that makes the film hum along with a comforting cadence. His previous collaboration with Morgan, Frost/Nixon, was more cerebral and it is unlikely that Rush will get nominated for any major awards. But it lives up to its title with such panache that there is no way you will walk out of the theatre feeling like you’ve wasted your money.

(Suprateek Chatterjee is editor of Visual Disobedience, a community for emerging indie artists, and a freelance writer. In his spare time, he likes to compose music with his electro-rock band Vega Massive and his Twitter handle is @SupraMario.)