American Flyers

Continuing my plan to watch every Kevin Costner movie in order, I come to his final movie of 1985 American Flyers.

Plot In A Paragraph: David Summers (David Grant) trains on his bicycle every day, hoping someday to be as good a racer as his older brother Marcus (KC) Relationships are explored as two brothers compete in a gruelling bicycle race, named "The Hell of the West"

Directed by John Badham, American Flyers is brilliantly shot, nicely paced and the bicycle races are exciting (despite the obvious ending) especially during a frightening scene when someone loses control of his bicycle high up in the mountains.

The performances are all interesting, and well played. KC is more subdued here, than his flashier turns in Fandango and Silverado, but it's a performance with depth. with solid support from the lovely Rae Dawn Chong, John Amos and Alexandria Paul

It has a few problems, such as it leaves a lot of unanswered questions, what did or didn't the mother do, during the last few weeks of their fathers illness and did one of them actually have the hereditary problem?? It's never disclosed. Then the villain of the piece, one minute he is a giant A-hole, then you think he's not that bad, and maybe a bit misunderstood and just angry. Then he attempts to murder someone, and you think WTF?? I suspect some scenes with him may have been left on the cutting room floor.

All in all, American Flyers is a feel good movie, that has a real story with believable characters facing some serious problems.