Rush

Rush was Ron Howard's movie last fall about the Formula One racing rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. I cannot imagine it was a commercial success, especially because the racing sequences are much more abbreviated than in either Frankenheimer's Grand Prix or Steve McQueen's Le Mans. This means Howard will have to make some stupid blow-'em-up movie to get back in the good graces of the studios. However, it is a great story, contrasting Lauda's Germanic heads-down attention to detail with Hunt's seat-of-the-pants, screw-every-woman-available style. They both accomplished amazing things on the race course, winning races and glory. This culminated in the 1976 season, in which there were a lot of rule book arguments, in which Lauda had a near-fatal accident at the German Grand Prix, and in which Hunt took the world championship by one point at the rain-drenched Japanese Grand Prix. My main frustration with the movie is the short shrift given to the two races which I saw in person that year at Long Beach and Watkins Glen.