Rush Review

Peter Morgan builds Rush the way he built Frost/Nixon for Ron Howard, as a duel between two men who need each other more than either will admit. Chris Hemsworth's James Hunt treats risk as a lifestyle and Daniel Brühl's Niki Lauda treats it as arithmetic, saying exactly what he thinks of every car, team and rival. Brühl, nominated for the Golden Globe and the BAFTA, has the better lines and the harder arc, and Lauda's return to the cockpit after his burns is the film's centre.

Anthony Dod Mantle's camera stays low and close in saturated period colour, the races are cut with real speed (Daniel P. Hanley and Mike Hill won the BAFTA for editing), and Hans Zimmer's score does the rest. Olivia Wilde and Alexandra Maria Lara, as the two wives, are given little to play.

The history is bent for drama. The real Hunt and Lauda had shared a flat and were friends, and several confrontations are invented, though Lauda himself called the film very accurate. It took 98.2 million dollars worldwide on a 38 million dollar budget, only 26.9 million of it in North America.