garychurch

I now realise I have seen clips of this documentary used in other F1 films and it's good to see the whole film. It has some interesting and candid interviews with leading drivers of the day with no PR person in sight interrupting the interview. It starts with the horrific Tom Pryce accident in Kyalami but after that it's not too graphic. It's also sad to see Francois Cevert discussing how smoothly his team mate, Jackie Stewart, drives in the same year died. Another thing which is striking is how tatty and worn the cars look compared to immaculate specimens you see today and also how soft their suspension was. Also surprising is the amount of surplus people in the pits who have to dive out of the way when the cars come in The film is of its time and has a lot of the 70s trademarks - swirling aerial helicopter shots, rambling incidental music, lingering female breast shots, and goes down odd cinematic avenues to try and set the scene before jumping back into f1 but I am not complaining. It's also filmem, to a degree, from a 'let's teach the Americans about f1. Most of the video footage is of good quality and with age it has become a good historical record of an F1 era which must be fading fast, even from the memories of those who lived through it. Much like Steve McQueenks Le Mans

I was looking forward to this film and the beginning is good and the grizzly bear scene is very impressive but thereafter it falls away somewhat. Leonardo dicaprio seems to survive above all logic - bear attack, nearly dead and frothing from the mouth, bit then can crawl, icy river in a animal skins and then appears to make an almost instant recovery and can then walk again, neatly guts a horse in a blizzard and sleeps in it to keep warm, despite the fact that he's slept out for the previous nights with massive ice crystals in his beard and survived. He then looks quite well but collapses when his employer finds him and then a short time later is fit and fine to pursue the baddie. On another point all the musket shots are amazingly accurate but almost everyone forgets to reload them so there are a lot of surprised clicks and no shot (if you owned and understood a musket wouldn't you reload immediately you'd fired it?). Then there is end where leonardo pursues the baddie and watches him fall in a heap at the bottom of as slope. What shall we do? The logical thing is to reload the musket and take a shot at presumably a dead cert range, given how accurate they have been, but no we fall down the slope in a sloppy manner( maybe the bear bites and tree fall injuries are kicking in at last) and then ensures fight where no weapon is reused. The baddie avoids a tomahawk strike but gets stabbed in the back of the knee but leonardo abandons the seemingly effective and we have the classic strangulation scene before finally the baddie is thrown in the river to the delight of the Indians. I had hoped to enjoy this movie and had previously watched the hateful eight which was fun but a bit overlong (fast forward the first 45mins) but I have to say that quentin Tarantinos film was much better. Okay it's different take but still a western