Overall, it's a passable extreme sport film. I'm writing this review as someone who grew up riding (nowhere near this level) and I've worked behind a camera and as an editor in a professional capacity over many years.
The director claims to have 20 years in film-making experience, so I was a little shocked by the direction, edits, and mismatched color grading. Many of the shots should have stayed on the cutting room floor. The multiple lazily speed-ramped clips feel too scared to just let a clip play at normal speed for 2-3 extra seconds. Or maybe the editors just thought it didn't look cool because it was too slow, so they ramped the speed for certain sections of the clip. When done artistically, I think this is a non-issue, but it's done several times throughout the film, and always during a section that clearly felt "not cool enough" to the editor(s). That's the worst reason to use a speed ramp. It makes the edit look very amateur.
The color grading is another issue. It's all over the place. I know that it's difficult to match color and exposure from multiple sources-especially when some of your clips are from non-RAW sources (like a GoPro that's using obnoxious levels of saturation and sharpening to compensate for its comparatively poor technical specifications), but it can still be done much better. I'm not sure if they had a dedicated colorist for this film, but I'd suggest hiring a good one for the next project. They're a deeply undervalued aspect of film-making.
However, none of that is what brought me to the write this review. I do genuinely hope the director takes this comment for the constructive feedback it's meant to be, but the issue that compelled me to write the review was the guy they interviewed to talk about "getting back on the horse" regarding Colby's crash. The man says you cannot "b***h out" if you choose extreme sport as your way of life. This clip plays right after the back-to-back sections where the film pays homage to two riders who died doing the same thing Colby was doing: long-distance jumps. From a storytelling perspective, it displays poor emotional awareness. From a human perspective, it's unbelievably toxic. Imagine telling the surviving families of those two dead riders that it's good their father/son/husband didn't b***h out. It's better that he died doing what he loved than maybe playing it a tiny bit safer and spending the next 30-60 years with his family. Insane.
If you get a bad feeling about a stunt, or have a crash that makes you lose the confidence to keep pushing your limits, it is 1,000% okay to find a new normal for yourself, in whatever form that may take. Get back on the horse and go harder, stop pushing yourself so much and just ride at whatever feels comfortable, or never ride again. They're all equally valid. It's utterly toxic and asinine to define a person's decision about their own personal safety as "b***hing out." Unbelievably disrespectful.
