Il vincitore

Kevin Costner and David Marshall Grant are a pair of brothers named Summers who are not the closest pair going. Both are bicycle racers. Costner was a champion and has now retired from the sport and is a sports medicine doctor. The other one is a talented racer but a playboy and won't settle down to train for the sport and has no great career ambitions.

It's Costner who gets Grant to train seriously by promising to come out of retirement and race with him in the great Colorado bike race known as American Hell because of the stark barrenness of the landscape they race on. What Grant doesn't know is that Costner has an aneurysm which can break at any time and cause instant but painless death. It gives Costner an added incentive to get Grant to straighten up and fly right.

There are some nice scenes with Costner and Grant and Janice Rule who plays their mother. Their dad died of this same thing and the tendency to aneurysm is inherited. There's a couple of women attracted to the Summers boys, Rae Dawn Chong and Alexandra Paul who become biker groupies. I suppose every sport and every musician has them.

The cycling scenes are beautifully photographed in Colorado and are worth seeing the film alone. But the essence of American Flyers isn't sport or scenery, it's the conflict between the brothers who come together in the end as good families do.

You might want to take up cycling yourself after seeing American Flyers.