Life (and Moral Questions) at Stake in the Fast Lane

Review of Rush, Ron Howard’s fuel-injected auto-racing drama

Chris Hemsworth (l) and Daniel Brühl star in 'Rush.'
Chris Hemsworth (l) and Daniel Brühl star in 'Rush.' (photo: RushMovie.com)

Ernest Hemingway is famously credited with saying, “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing and mountaineering. The rest are merely games.”

The common denominator they share: a thrill-seeking flirtation with death; the competing seduction of Eros (life instinct) and Thanatos (death) in Freudian psychology.

It is that romance with risk-taking that drives Rush, director Ron Howard’s fuel-injected auto-racing drama.

Inspired by true events, the film recounts the intense rivalry between famed Formula One (or F1) drivers — British playboy James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Austrian perfectionist Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) — during the 1976 Grand Prix circuit.

Lauda dominates most of the season, winning six out of the first nine international races for team Ferrari and amassing a seemingly insurmountable lead in points, only to have Hunt close the gap, leading to a fateful showdown on a rain-slicked track in Nürburgring, Germany, “The Ring,” nicknamed “The Green Hell” for its treacherous, hairpin twists and turns.

Lauda voices safety concerns, but they fall on deaf ears. The race proceeds, ending in tragedy, with the Austrian’s car crashing and bursting into flames. Lauda survives, but he suffers near-fatal injuries, including third-degree burns to his face that leave him severely scarred.

Through sheer competitive grit, Lauda works his way back behind the wheel, placing third in his first race back and setting up “the grudge match of the decade” in his final face-off against Hunt in Japan.

Racing enthusiasts will appreciate the film’s attention to detail. Howard rounded up period cars for F1 authenticity. But you don’t have to be a fan of the sport to get caught up in the story. Unlike the Fast & Furious franchise that caters to America’s car culture, this film is much more about what drives the two men, rather than what the two men drive.

Having said that, the movie is about racing, and the speedway set pieces don’t disappoint. Among Howard’s pit crew is Oscar-winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who infuses the exhilarating sequences with a high-octane energy that makes you feel like you’re in the action — theater chairs should come equipped with seat belts.  Not to mention ear plugs: With all those engines revving, it gets mighty loud.

Howard continues to prove he is one of the most versatile filmmakers working today, a throwback to studio-era directors like William Wyler and Victor Fleming. In an age enamored of directors putting a “stamp” on their films, Howard remains an “anti-auteur,” hopping from genre to genre: from comedy (Splash and Parenthood) and westerns (The Missing) to epic romance (Far and Away) political dramas (Frost/Nixon) and period pieces (Apollo 13, Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man).

In his confident hands, he takes what could have been a “formula” racing film (excuse the pun) and turns it into a fascinating twin character study. It doesn’t hurt that the real-life story on which it is based is truly stranger than fiction.

Nor does it hurt that Lauda and Hunt are such compelling figures, complete with fatal flaws that give their tale the pathos of a Greek tragedy. Like Icarus, they fly too close to the sun and get burned — in Lauda’s case, literally.

Recalling childhood memories of the events depicted, novelist Edward Docx recently wrote in The Guardian that watching them was like watching “gods compete” — a modern Hector and Achilles — pushing themselves to their mortal limits. And yet he notes, while they were “so different in character that they might almost be from different species: Hunt the epicurean, Lauda the ascetic,” their rivalry was based on “the conjunction of this difference and this similarity.”

Though fierce competitors, the two men share a mutual admiration and respect. They both live on the edge, which makes the interplay so interesting. However, while Lauda’s tragedy on the tarmac leaves him physically scarred, it is Hunt’s interior wreckage that makes him the far more tragic figure.

As racing legend Mario Andretti once said, “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” Hunt can’t go fast enough. You get the sense that he is fleeing away from his pain, rather than chasing glory. Or perhaps it’s both. Sadly, Hunt, though dominant in the driver’s seat, is incapable of keeping his life on track.

The film explores the pursuit of “greatness” at all costs, the danger of how passion can become an all-consuming obsession, as well as its effect on self-identity and interpersonal relationships. It also raises important questions about a healthy view of masculinity in our hyper-macho age of extreme sports.

In telling a story with two protagonists (neither likable, but both sympathetic),  Howard faces the challenge of dual rooting interests; but, much like another extreme-sport-themed movie, Warrior (2011), he pulls it off, thanks in no small part to his leads’ full-throttle performances.

Hemsworth, with his Adonis good looks (he is Thor, after all), brings a vitality and rakish charm (and vulnerability) to the role of the boozing, fornicating Hunt. With the film set in the glam days of the 1970s racing scene, there’s quite a bit of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Conversely, Brühl radiates a tightly-wound analytic intensity as the arrogant and uncomely Lauda.

Their complicated relationship is tinted with shades of Amadeus, with Lauda’s methodical and disciplined Salieri envious of Hunt’s profligate but naturally gifted Mozart — only, here, its Mozart chasing Salieri. Lauda would no doubt concur with Salieri’s observation: “Looks and talent don’t always go together.”

Hunt’s and Lauda’s wives (played respectively by Olivia Wilde and Alexandra Maria Lara) feature prominently. And while Lauda turns away a priest during his hospital stay and weds in a civil ceremony, his wife’s dedication during his recovery and committed devotion, despite his disfigurement — as his to her — affirms the dignity of marriage. 

Obviously, the central moral question is: What makes a person want to spend his life driving at breakneck speed in what Hunt calls “bombs with wheels”?

The answer offered by Hunt early on — that the closer you are to death, the more alive you feel — is challenged by one driver’s late moral epiphany (or at least an evolved risk assessment) that spins the rivalry and the climax in an unforeseen direction.

Does life gain added meaning by looking our mortality in the face? G.K. Chesterton asked as much in Manalive, in which his protagonist, Innocent Smith, tries to “hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man” not to kill him, but to encourage a renewed appreciation for the gift of life. 

Rush remains morally ambiguous in its answer, but it is a provocative question nonetheless.

This film holds you from its rain-swept opening sequence to the final checkered flag. Compelling as a cautionary tale about life in the fast lane, the movie engages viewers, while providing quite an adrenal rush.

David DiCerto, former film reviewer for the Office for Film & Broadcasting

of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is co-host of Reel Faith

with Register Film Critic Steven D. Greydanus.

 

Content Advisory: The film is rated R and contains intense racing action, disturbing and gory images, sexual situations with nudity, drug usage and strong language. Mature audiences./