Rush

by Julian Spivey
With “Rush,” director Ron Howard has done something that you don’t see too often on film … he has captured sports rivalry so well and uniquely that you come out of the film not rooting for one of the rivals over the other; but merely marveling at the intensity and relationship between the two.
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This makes “Rush” unique because it seems that most sports films play up a good guy versus bad guy scenario and in “Rush” Chris Hemsworth’s brash, British party boy Formula 1 driver James Hunt easily could have been the bad guy or villain to Daniel Bruhl’s ever-serious, scientific in his passion German driver Niki Lauda.

But, Ron Howard and mostly screenwriter Peter Morgan, who’s responsible for many of the finest movies featuring British personalities of the last few years (“The Queen,” “The Damned United” and his previous matchup with Howard, “Frost/Nixon”), thankfully realized that there are two sides to every rivalry and while those two sides are often going to be incredibly different and neither person may see eye to eye, as with Hunt and Lauda, it doesn’t necessarily mean somebody has to be good and bad.
It is this distinguishing factor of the film that truly makes it great. It makes it more than your typical or stereotypical sports movie and turns it into basically a character study of two guys striving for the same goal in immensely different fashions.

Bruhl is a relative newcomer to American audiences and his role here as Lauda and his raved about upcoming role in “The Fifth Estate” are sure to put him on the map. He seems fully immersed in his role as Lauda bringing the determined German racer to the screen in a way that gives him a blue collar working man’s mentality with a mathematician/scientific way of thinking that allows him to capture every last bit of speed from his Ferarri. It’s Lauda’s drive that makes him admirable and Bruhl performs that effortlessly. It’s likely not a performance that’s going to see the newcomer earn Oscar-nomination praise, especially in what seems to be a jam-packed year of award-worthy performances, but it is a performance that is certainly worthy of much praise.

As for Hemsworth, an actor that is certainly known in America thanks to his role as Thor in the Marvel comic book movies, but nevertheless is an actor that I remained unfamiliar with, also shines in his performance as the playboy Hunt. Hunt loves to party hard, carouse with women and always has a mischievous smile strewn across his face. He is the type of person they talk about when they say “live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse” and he is the antithesis of Lauda.

It is this contraposition of characters that make this, and almost every real life or movie (in this case both), rivalry so utterly fascinating to watch. Some people might come into “Rush” hoping to see a high-flying action film (which it gives the audience in its racing scenes), but they are going to come away having seen one of the best representations of rivalry that any recent movie has given us and most sports movies prove inadequate at by not showing both sides.

“Rush” is Ron Howard’s most impressive film since he and Morgan last teamed up for the Oscar-nominated “Frost/Nixon.” It is a film that obviously knows its characters and gets inside of their heads to show us their passion and their drive for what they do. Any film essentially about daredevils who risk their lives every single time they strap into their cars and put their helmets on to do business at over 200 miles per hour must give us that insight to truly be great. Most films of the like just give us the high flying action, but “Rush” takes the opportunity to go deeper and ultimately takes the checkered flag because of it.