Rush

Ron Howard’s perfect craftsmanship with soul and a nice message. The director proves that he knows both his craft and people. The focus is not on the races but on the characters. The two main characters are diametrically different but equally respectable madmen. Both embody the archetypes of today’s favorite film heroes – a wild guy who enjoys parties and women versus a level-headed, introverted and ambitious intellectual. What unites them is adrenaline and the desire for victory. And a strange form of friendship. They compete while inspiring each other. Thanks to Howard’s direction, you can enjoy every scene they appear in, whether separately or together. The script is said to contain factual errors and I missed the first race when Hunt recognized Lauda as a threat. But these are forgivable flaws of a beautifully rendered film about rivalry with the smell of burning rubber, which you simply cannot dislike. Daniel Brühl delivers one of the best acting performances of the year. (16/09/2013)

"A wise man can learn more from his enemies than a fool from his friends." (Niki Lauda). (02/01/2014)

Is it merely a coincidence that Ron Howard did the most masterful work of his career not in Hollywood (which would surely not have allowed so many warts and broken bones protruding from the bodies of injured racers), but in an independent production put together by several smaller studios? Rush is not flawless. You will see the awakening of the two protagonists coming in the numerous circuits, the female characters are passive and serve only for decoration, some of the “deep” dialogue is there only to fill silent gaps, and the attempt at two equally valuable character studies is hindered by the fact that screenwriter Peter Morgan put substantially more work into humanising the monster (the “horror” shots of a mutilated face border on distastefulness) than making the playboy wiser. However, the doubling of narrators and the wringing of tension out of their essentially friendly rivalry (there is no actual bad guy) comprise the main draw of this otherwise generally good but not exceptional film. Two strong characters are a guarantee of sufficient dramatic material throughout the film's two-hour runtime and it is highly probable that you will be left wanting more at the end. Morgan offers enough information about the organisation of races in the 1970s to keep even a person unfamiliar with Formula One in the picture and, at the same time, is very careful not to anger fans of either Hunt or Lauda. In comparison with the similarly structured Crying Fist, whose climax evokes much more ambivalent feelings (because it is about life), the careful manoeuvring of Rush caused me to feel indifferent to who would win, and I thus manoeuvring generally lost interest in what was happening on screen during the final act. Rush probably owes its extraordinary popularity to the fact that everyone ultimately wins in their own way. However, another key factor is undoubtedly the precision of the film’s craftsmanship, thanks to which you perceive the racing sequences hopped up with superbly tuned sound and the fetishistic close-ups of various machine parts with all of your senses. It’s not as immersive as a PlayStation racing game, but comes pretty damned close. 80% (11/10/2013)

This is exactly the kind of film you can successfully recommend to everyone. Rush is, a little paradoxically, a terribly safe movie about a terribly unsafe (at the time) sport. The performances and the direction are great, but unfortunately I can’t share the enthusiasm. It didn’t win my heart. (17/12/2013)

Morgan is the man. He conceives the sleek façade of roaring engines and their tamers in fire-proof overalls as an epic drama, with passionate dialogue and a sense of fair play playing a central role. We get all this in the perfect coat of Ron Howard's directorial tricks, for whom the task of creating an atmospheric visual composition is as demanding as preparing breakfast in the morning. The editing camera orgy and the riveting acting (Daniel Brühl is eyeing the Oscars) are so sovereign for two hours that it smacks a little of (traditional) "Howardian calculus," which entertains you for two hours but, like gasoline vapor, wears off by the second day at the latest. That it leaves a very strong and specific odor, I do not deny. 4 ½. (01/01/2014)

Ron Howard is evidently good at making biopics. Even if you don’t grow fond of Niki Lauda or James Hunt, there is still the final scene that simply launches everything a mile high. But if you’re naturally open-minded when it comes to good movies, you will definitely appreciate that the actors who portray these two characters exactly pinpoint the meaning of the term rivalry as such. Niki Lauda or James Hunt were no idiots, but they were definitely not normal, either. Whatever was between them was something that is no longer fashionable in sports today. It was mutual hatred that was supported by a great deal of respect for one another. This movie captures this perfectly. I cannot but give it a five-star rating. Niki sure must convince you of that at the end of the movie! (11/02/2014)

Howard is more like Niki Lauda - cool, calculating, like a professor with a flair for fine design. Because of this, Rush accelerates incredibly in the racing sequences and stiffens a bit where the film tries to name the destructiveness of racing passion. James Hunt looks like a poster boy (something like a gasoline-smelling pin-up boy) and the best parts aren't the wooden dialogues, but rather the moment when the heroes make a face or gesture after them. Otherwise, Rush is actually a fresh affair in terms of "sports lemonade". It is customary that in sports dramas, the hero has to sacrifice something and deny a piece of himself. Given that the film Lauda has what the film Hunt does not have, and vice versa, the final victory is in fact absolute. Everyone has their truth and their piece of triumph. The moment when, in the end, one cannot decide to whom to cheer for more is quite rare. I would like to point out that Rush idealizes the whole sport like knights, and according to them, it is not possible to perfectly reconstruct the case of "Lauda vs Hunt". I've been waiting all year for a blockbuster that pushes me into my seat and pumps me up with adrenaline. I had Rush as a black horse (don't hit me, I know it's basically on an indie budget). They did their job perfectly. [80%] P.S. Thumbs up for Brühl... Lauda has never been this cool. Cold and sharp as a razor. (24/09/2013)

Rush follows Morgan’s template, where he starts with some real events, finds a “timeless" theme in it and then subordinates everything to that theme. Not a thread of truth remains in this dramatization of real events, but it doesn’t matter, because the end effect is that things could have been like that and they might easily have said it like that. Which isn’t a bad approach; and he’s a dramatist anyhow. It would be a mistake to expect faithfulness to the truth from Rush, and an even greater mistake to try to find an insight into the racing car driver’s soul, Le Mans - style. And it would have been stupid to expect a sports cliché from them. Sport is only secondary in this movie. What can you expect from it, then? A drama (first and foremost drama!) about rivalry between two adversaries where one is heads and the other tails of the same coin and where each represents a different archetype of the sport; a charismatic playboy enjoying life to the full and darling of the camera with a talent straight from God while others look after his career versus the drilled, tight, precise art of a through and through rational careerist who avoided the spotlight under all circumstances. A portrait of two men where one wouldn’t have existed without the other and... A sort of racing yin and yang. In the audience-pleasing garb (and Howard knows how to sell it, no doubt about that) of Formula 1, while not being about Formula 1 at all. (02/10/2013)

Perhaps you can get into the smoothly flowing storyline and the genre-specific battle of contradictions. Yet in all honesty and humanity, I cannot do it justice, and anyone who has ever loved Formula races when it was not about strategic team laps but truly deadly entertainment will feel the same. From the first roar of the engines through the acting concert of the explosive Chris Hemsworth and the cold Daniel Brühl to a breathtaking final act filled with visual perfection and emotional richness. And if that isn't enough for a full experience, Hans Zimmer roars and the car is instantly back on the track. A track where every press of the pedal could be your last. (09/10/2013)

I don’t remember them. It’s set in 1976 which is ten years before I was born. But thanks to Howard, it doesn’t matter, because he is great at intimating the atmosphere of a time when car racing wasn’t just based on math (the great closing conversation digs a lot at this fact) and when people like hunt were our heroes - knights in shining armor. A perfectly balanced screenplay that has something to say, devoted direction, precise, while it’s clear that this is a labor of love. Hemsworth has never acted so well (or he wasn’t acting and that’s what he’s like) and Brühl simply became Lauda. Rush is a picture that refuels faith in car racing, in movies about car racing and about well-told stories from real life as such. The dialogs are polished, the visuals are somewhere between a modern style and faithfully capturing seventies style, the tension can be cut with a knife and there is no chance to get bored during those two hours. I expect at least three Oscar nominations. The best movie this year so far. Zimmer risks nothing in terms of topic. P.S.: Girls will like this too, even if they don’t like racing, because the racing takes up only about a quarter of an hour of the movie. Happiness is your biggest enemy. (10/10/2013)

An incredibly nuanced, dense, visceral and indescribably inspiring film. (06/10/2013)

Formula One racing is among the sports I'm interested in, as long as I see a good story behind it. The story of Niki Lauda (and James Hunt) is like that of course, whose book “My Years with Ferrari" I read several times, and I was always fascinated by Laud's perfectionism and the cold mind, under which of course, the mind must be boiling. And that's exactly the kind of Lauda film Rush showed me. Daniel Brühl looks like his double and pointedly plays on that thin edge of unsympathetic arrogance and sympathetic genius the character needs. Chris Hemsworth is just the same as the young man Hunt. And the film tells their story with different embellishments, but that important “ice versus fire" and that hostile mood is there. In addition, the races are superbly filmed, Zimmer's music fits... And the whole part in the hospital, especially the putting-on of helmets, is so plausible, as if a person was watching a documentary (like the most impressive scenes from Senna). (08/08/2017)

Are you an ambitious dude with a huge ego, willing to sacrifice everything for your life goal and squeeze your talent to the last drop? Then, for two hours, you'll be rooting for the extroverted Hunt while enjoying the performance of a lifetime by Chris Hemsworth, who’s clearly as good in this real-life role as he is as a comic book hero. Or do you consider yourself a introverted, conflicted pedant who would give his life for everything to be perfect and guaranteed "your way"? In that case, you’ll be in seventh heaven at the sight of the iconic Niki Lauda cutting sharp turns with a burnt face and voluntarily having a tube shoved into his lungs, and you will enjoy in a trance Daniel Brühl's amazing portrayal, which will probably attack pole position in the Oscar nominations. And if you don't fit into either character group, it doesn't matter, because if you're a person equipped with basic instincts, a desire for victory and recognition, and respect for every opponent, you’ll to love this perfectly filmed odyssey into the wild soul of racing at least a little bit. Actually, not a little bit, but a lot... :) (28/12/2013)

An excellent film about (at times almost terrifying) rivalry back in the day when Formula 1 was still the queen of motorsport and not what’s left of it today. The film is crafted to perfection. Most importantly, it is believable. It completely drew me into the atmosphere of the time. Although I knew how it would end, I was entertained all the way through and will gladly watch it a couple more times. (26/06/2016)

I have to say that I was very surprised when I found out that this was directed by Ron Howard. It's as if he finally realized that not everything has to be so Hollywood-like and that it's possible to shoot a story without too much pathos, with strong characters, especially Daniel Brühl who is amazing, and without too much emphasis on the races themselves. Yes, when it comes to them, it's exactly what you would expect and it's good, but here the story and the relationship between two people who didn't really like each other at first glance simply dominates. (18/01/2014)

They picked a very good topic for a film. There have been very few motorsport films made so far, and perhaps only Le Mans, which was conceived in a completely different way, is of good quality. That's why this film had the perfect prerequisites to attract attention. And it succeeded. The creative team consisted entirely of seasoned professionals, and they were able to firmly grasp the subject matter and select the most compelling parts of Hunt's and Lauda's lives in a reasonable running time without a single weak moment. The actors were spot on, both in appearance and character – you could really see it in Hemsworth. Hans Zimmer built up the atmosphere with his dynamic music, Morgan created great scenes with dialogue full of banter between the two leads, and cinematographer Mantle added some perfect race scenes. Ron Howard's best film contains everything that can be expected from a proper drama. (04/10/2013)

I consider myself one of the few who don't admire this work from a film perspective (of course, Zimmer's music and Brühl's performance are spectacular), but I feel compelled to give it the highest rating simply because I love the world of F1 and the movie made me remember two legends of this motorsport and revisit a time when courage and passion for this sport meant much more and the differences between the racers were minimal, unlike today when Vettel drives an absolutely perfect car and the world title is already decided by mid-season. Nevertheless, from a purely film perspective and judging by my emotional reaction to the movie, Senna was considerably better. (20/08/2022)