An average movie

Honestly, I had some rather mixed feelings about the whole thing. First of all, with a running time of 3 hours, it was just way too long for its own good. I mean, it was a nice touch that you were allowed to follow this championship through different races, allowing different drivers to win and, as a result, there was quite some suspense about who might become the champion after all. Still, the main issue is that Formula one is, in my opinion, actually one of the most boring sports out there. I remember, I had an Italian friend who used to say that there are only 2 interesting events during a Formula one race : the start up and when there is a car crash. The rest is just cars driving around and around endlessly (and I’m from Le Mans where they do this for 24 hours so I know what I’m talking about). This movie is a fine example of this theory. Indeed, Frankenheimer can direct action scenes and the races were pretty exciting but it got pretty repetitive after a while and, therefore, there were 2 major accidents plus some minor ones to spice up the proceedings. It was also an interesting approach to develop the life of the drivers between the races but, unfortunately, their life was pretty much reduced to a soap opera which was rather underwhelming. To conclude, I think I’m being rather generous with my rating but I think it might still be a worth a look, especially if you are fan of this sport.

6/10