Upon first hearing about
Rush I was under the impression that it would mainly center itself around the wreck in which Formula 1 race car driver Niki Lauda was severely burned and had such a drive to compete and will to win and become world champion that he returned to racing less than a month after his wreck and surprised everyone. Even in that admittedly compact and typical synopsis it is easy to see why this true life story would be ideal to tell on the big screen, especially with the bonus of being a sports movie. I also assumed that Chris Hemsworth would be playing Lauda as he seemed the central point of the project and I had no former knowledge of the world of Formula 1 racing or what type of history they were pulling from here. When I watched the first trailer for the film and discovered that not only was the film about Lauda, as portrayed by Daniel Brühl of
Inglorious Basterds, overcoming the brakes his near fatal crash put on his career, but also a famous rivalry between he and the far more adventurous James Hunt (Hemsworth) I was pleasantly surprised there was more to the story. While I've never been a fan of racing it was easy to see why this movie could be an intriguing piece of drama and with Ron Howard (
Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) at the helm it was at least guaranteed to some degree that there would be a level of pedigree to the project, but whether it would stray towards safe, middle ground or exceptional territory was what we were left to determine. Lucky for us,
Rush is not simply the movie of a man who drives cars in circles for a living overcoming a set of odds, but it is almost a psychological evaluation of two men who have vastly different approaches to the same thing and how those approaches define them as men and determine every other aspect of their lives that has nothing to do with their job that happens to put them in life or death situations every time they start their engines. It is a fascinating and thrilling film to experience, one I could hardly make any complaints about other than the fact that it didn't have as impressive an impact on me as I expected. Still, this is a well crafted film that defies story convention and features great performances from its two leads that will serve as a true breakout for one and a definitive breakaway for the other.
