Downhill Racer

Kitzbühel, Wengen. It has always intrigued me how a downhill skier feels when, for the first time ever at these legendary resorts, he stands at the starting gate and must find the courage and strength to push off and hurtle down the slope where more likely than the finish line, an injury awaits. And Ritchie presents us these feelings on a gold platter. He puts his money on the “inner" atmosphere (if you are one of the people who found the scene looking into the eyes of a wild animal in Collateral really powerful, you know what I mean). Which might seem strange with a sports movie, but it works. And it works well. On the other hand, thanks to this, the movie is very viewer unfriendly, which is helped by the fact that it contains no genre clichés and Redford plays (excellently, I must say) maybe the most unpleasant character of his entire career. (21/02/2010)

Barefoot in the Park slightly dented his stellar start, Sundance Kid catapulted him to the acting Olympus, and in the meantime Redford, my idol, made this unremarkable tale of an arrogant man who comes to happiness. There’s no chance to build a positive relationship with his character, because he starts his story as a pretentious jerk and ends the same way, with no sign of any epiphany. Moreover, it's not even very well directed, not to mention the choppy narrative. The ending offers an unintended parallel to Ledecká's recent unexpected Olympic triumph in the downhill (here as a German downhill racer), but even here the filmmakers didn’t go off the expected track. It was interesting perhaps only for comparison and confirmation of what a huge technological and qualitative leap winter sports, and downhill skiing in particular, have made since then. (16/06/2022)

Who would have thought that downhill skiing can make for such a suspenseful drama? But I would definitely have been happier if there was more racing and falling and getting injured than dealing with all those relationship slopes. (19/03/2013)