Ron Howard is a pretty reliable director to deliver well-made movies that everyone in the family over the age of 11 can watch when it plays TNT on Sunday afternoons. He really has come to hone the craft of making generally agreeable prestige pictures, from “Apollo 13” to “Cinderella Man” to “Frost/Nixon.” At times, his movies can really hit the spot when I’m looking to be entertained somewhere in the range of mindfulness and mindlessness.
“Rush,” though, fails to meet Howard’s normal lowest common denominator criterion. While it’s thrillingly shot by Anthony Dod Mantle, the DP who brought you “Slumdog Millionaire” and “127 Hours,” the film hardly runs like a well-oiled machine. It’s leaking oil all over the place. Thankfully, no one was around to light the fatal match.
Most of its problems begin at the script, so deeply rooted that there was probably very little Howard could do to direct his way out of its flaws. Peter Morgan’s screenplay for “Rush” crashes and burns from the moment it begins – with clunky, obvious narration that he could have easily worked into subtext. It proceeds unevenly and never really developing the rivalry between its two protagonists, the lothario James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth of “Thor“) and the weaselly Type A Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl of “Inglourious Basterds“).
Both give decent performances, particularly Brühl, who has several moments where he flirts with tremendous power. But neither can transcend the clichés that mire “Rush.” Perhaps Howard could have stepped in to add more gravitas to their head-bashing where Morgan made them inane schoolyard boys with clashing egos.
Alas, he did not, and “Rush” delivers little of what its title promises. There are well-executed racing sequences that at least keep our attention, which is actually a fair accomplishment since I am not very invested in or knowledgeable about Formula 1. But in a movie about racing, isn’t that the expectation? In “Rush,” these sequences are coherent and interesting on a most basic level. Beyond that, however, there isn’t an interesting or daring visual choice in the entire movie. I saw every wheel in the film turning just as I saw every turn coming.
You could say I’m an expert driver behind the wheel of film criticism. But really, I just fancy myself as just a normal moviegoer armed with the knowledge that one gets from seeing too many films. And I’ve come to the point where I’ve taken so many laps around the movie theater that I really don’t want Ron Howard taking me for a spin anymore unless he can recapture a spark of ingenuity and adventure. It doesn’t have to be experimental or even all that daring. It just needs to be fresh enough to be agreeable. C+ / 
Marshall and the Movies 
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