Rush: Review by Haus

Fade in. Engines roar, and I’m at once uneasy: Does Ron Howard get it?

Rush is one of the most anticipated racing movies I can remember, but I confess to being a bit gun-shy. This is because racing movies are catnip to bombastic blowhards. Discount bins are strewn with pompous, overwrought coaster-fodder like The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and Driven (the choke-awful 2001 Sylvester Stallone flop that, as far as I can tell, drove only nails into the coffin of the CART series). It’s not hard to see why: Shiny machines, high drama, risk, and speed seem a sure-fire recipe for a mindless blockbuster. But while we enthusiasts do love our cars and our racing, we also have a keen and cruel eye for bluster. To resonate with the car crowd, much hinges on authenticity – on just getting it.

And with Howard it could really go either way. On one hand, there’s Frost/Nixon and Apollo 13; on the other, Angels and Demons and – really think about this – The Dilemma.

Well, race fans, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Ron Howard gets it.

Rush clearly is the work of a director who loves racing: One who has thought carefully how best to capture and convey its beauty, energy, and emotion on screen while staying largely true to history and – crucially – reality.

Rush chiefly chronicles the 1976 Formula 1 racing season, when English driver James Hunt faced off with Austrian Niki Lauda for the world championship.  A quick Google dip could supply the underlying facts of this legendary season, but if you’re unfamiliar – and nearly 40 years later, most will be – I really suggest letting this movie do the work.

Director Howard supplies just enough scaffolding to the story, dialing back six years to the rivals’ first meeting in Formula 3; from there, it’s a steady chug to Formula 1 as each driver takes a different but equally unconventional path to the big series. Throughout, the two men spar, quip, and grate hard against one another – they’re polar opposites in lifestyle, attitude, personality, everything.  Rivals in the truest sense.

Rush is a full-on, all-in, utterly engrossing picture. I loved a good many things about it.

First and quite unexpectedly, Rush is a work of staggering visual beauty.  It swings between grey and colorful, pensive and lively, gentle and brutal; its muted palette, crisp close camera work, seamless CGI and faithful historical reproductions are sublime. It succeeds on the merits as a mid-seventies period study.  It’s a gorgeous film.

Second and still more unexpected, Chris Hemsworth absolutely nails the role of Hunt. Yes, the same Aussie who sets his jaw, steels his eyes, and twirls his hammer through the likes of Thor: The Dark World actually can act. As can the others. Daniel Brühl, lesser known on these shores, turns a career-making performance as Lauda. Alexandra Maria Lara is doe-eyed and honest as Lauda’s partner, and even Olivia Wilde has for tonight at least caused me to forgive her turns in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, In Time, and The Change Up. (No small feat.)

Third, most racing movies play fast and loose with danger. They either glamorize risk, ignore it entirely, or they give the whole sport such an unrealistic treatment that it never really matters in the first place.  Rush does none of those things.  It tackles the issue head on, repeatedly, and from multiple angles. Through Hunt and Lauda’s dramatically different outlooks on the issue, Rush becomes something of a meditation on risk, on danger, on life and death. And wisely, it never takes a side. Both men ultimately are right in their own way.

The last point relates to what Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi calls “flow”: That feeling of complete immersion in an activity where everything else drops away, leaving only calm focus, energy, rapt attention. Time doesn’t so much slow down as simply cease to matter; you’re in the zone, jacked in, doing what you were meant to do. Rush not only succeeds in capturing this state through masterful race and driving cinematography, but on more than a few occasions manages itself to provoke it.

To any audience, Rush is a terrific film: An engaging story with memorable characters and no easy answers. It’s beautiful, suspenseful, thrilling, resonant, and strong.

But to a lifelong car fanatic, Rush is transcendent.  I can think of no other picture that so wholly captures every aspect of what I’ve always loved about cars, racing, and competition, or indeed one that does any of those things with such charm.  Rush may well be the film of a lifetime.

Haus Verdict: The best car racing film ever made, and a damn good movie besides.