Rush (2013)

Now I am a Formula One fan so whenever there is a film about the sport that comes out then I want to go and see it. I saw the 2010 film ‘Senna’ in the cinema and loved it because it had Formula 1 in it but it was about the rivalry between Aryton Senna and Alain Prost. There has always been talk of a Formula one movie way back in the early 2000’s but it ended up being ‘Driven’ with Sylvester Stallone in a CART movie. When I heard that Ron Howard was going to direct this movie I was worried that the same sort of thing was going to happen but I am happy to report that this wasn’t the case. Rush tells the story of the rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt during the 1976 season. The story starts in 1970 when they were both in Formula 3 and what the film does quite well is portray Hunt and the playboy and Lauda as the serious and focused driver.

The central performances were very good. Chris Hemsworth played the pretty boy role well and I thought that whilst Hunt did come close at times to being a pantomime character the action meant that he was always going to have to be a bit more serious. Daniel Bruhl is the better of the two as Niki Lauda. Some of the scenes where he is in the hospital having his lungs cleared are truly uncomfortable but I think it does a great job in making the viewer sympathise and even like Lauda despite Lauda not being a particularly warm person.

Some of the racing action is superb. It genuinely looks like they have filmed it during the races but some of the circuits don’t exist in their current form. The highlight came in the final race where it was pouring down with rain and there is a shot where we are seeing Lauda’s POV and all you can see is a red light and its not a sharp light. Most people who aren’t F1 fans question how hard it is to race well this is a prime example. Driving on the motorway at 70mph is difficult enough but times that difficulty by 5 and it might come close to what this must have been like. The ending might come across as a bit melodramatic but as that is how it happened then its just something to deal with.

I thought that the final scene was the perfect way to end the film. It was a nice scene where they both argued that their way of driving and lifestyle was the best way and how they were made better because of their desire to beat the other. The voice over from Daniel Bruhl when he say that when Hunt died aged 45 that he wasn’t surprised. I think that everyone is surprised that he lived to the age that he did. I thought that Rush was a great movie and despite the scene where Hunt attacks a reporter, both Lauda and Hunt were portrayed in the right way and its another great F1 movie that is more about the personalities in the sport than the sport itself.