I went to see Rush yesterday and I absolutely loved it! The F1 scenes back from the 1970s are amazing, the casting is superb and the film is well paced. Even non-F1 fans will appreciate this movie as it’s not just focused on two pilots racing for the win but it also shows the human side behind the sport. One thing that I didn’t appreciate a lot were few car racing scenes as they were quick and not very easy to follow, but it didn’t bother me much as I know how difficult it is to reproduce these battles.
On another note, Rush managed to show the equal dangers that F1 drivers face despite the different characters found in this sport. James Hunt was a talented driver but often a reckless one yet it was Niki Lauda, the methodical and professional driver who crashed and almost died. It was pure and dangerous racing and as James Hunt puts it beautifully “The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It’s a wonderful way to live. It’s the only way to drive”. Of course F1 is much safer these days, yet the dangers are still there and we still have great talents, like Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher, coming out and risking everything for the win. I hope Rush will inspire F1 teams nowadays to let their drivers race for the sake of racing rather than collect points for the sponsors only.
All in all, we can easily say Rush is the best F1 movie till today, while Senna remains the best F1 documentary ever made. What I’d like to see one day is a complete documentary/movie on Michael Schumacher.