...of former business Titan John Delorean's dream gone wrong.
Based on the true story of John Delorean's struggle to create a brand new automotive sportscar line in the late 1970's, the same car made famous in "Back to the future". The Delorean was a mid-engined, all stainless steel bodied sports car, designed from scratch by Delorean's designing team to be an alternative to the GM and foreign sports cars. Buyers were underwhelmed by the anemic performance of the dodgy Renault-Peugeot-Volvo V6 engine, and despite the innovative gull-wing doors, the car turned out to be under-performing and trouble prone (if only because too few units - 9,000 - were ever produced in Delorean's Northern Ireland plant so the bugs could be worked out of the design). By 1982 lackluster sales of the car meant the company was facing bankruptcy. Desperately trying to keep his dream alive, and how he tried to do it via selling cocaine is the topic of this movie.
The film moves along briskly, with every scene foreshadowed by the opening shots of FBI informant Hoffman (Jason Sudeikis) being grilled in a courtroom by Delorean's defense attorney. Hoffman is in a bad place himself, having been caught flying in millions of dollars worth of cocaine, and so his FBI handlers need him to bring in a really big fish to prosecute - and through a series of strange events Delorean himself falls into their net. The resulting story is told in a way I found very engaging, with some really good performances being turned in by Judy Greer (as Hoffman's wife) and a show-stopping performance by Lee Pace as John Delorean. For me, watching Pace as Delorean was the most interesting part of the movie, since his acting is so good you definitely get the impression that this must have been the way Delorean was in real life. And even though I already knew the story, I found myself sympathizing with Delorean and glad the story turns out the way it did.
I thought this was a movie that did a whole lot with very little, and although the movie could and should have been a bit better, I think this movie's worth a watch.
