REVIEW - RUSH

Stories like this must be irresistible to screenwriters. I can imagine the real-life thing probably wasn't half as dramatic as the cinema version. After all, what living creature can relate the story of the premiere lap of Niki Lauda's revamped car on the BRM track from the perspective of a leaf on the grass, vaulted swiftly forward by the force of the vehicle's right front wheel? With the immeasurable aid of colossal sound design, brilliant photography and blazing editing, Ron Howard recreates the 1970s rivalry between Formula One drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda from a different perspective - that of each player's thumping heart, shuttling the blood around their bodies as fast as the cars they so fearlessly drive. Rush pounds along, each scene a marvel of glossy, brilliant melodrama, a truly high-octane experience. Scenes off the racetrack are well-mounted and well-acted, but not terribly well-scripted. They're just filling time though, colouring in the gaps of what the racing scenes can't fulfill. It's diverting, if middling. But then those racing scenes. Howard is utterly unforgiving, thrusting us full throttle into the tumult, directly into the eye of the storm to witness the fervour and the ferocity as if first-hand. If it's a sensationalised account of what happened, it's enormously effective, and probably closer to the spirit of the truth than a more measured account might be. And anyway, there's no harm in sensationalising the sensational. Anthony Dod Mantle's electrifying cinematography is particularly good at the film's climax, as he lacquers the Fuji track in relentless rain, in a palette of enveloping slate grey. Performances are fine with the exception of Daniel Bruhl, whose transformation into Lauda might be the biggest breakthrough for an established actor since Nicole Kidman in To Die For.