Historical racing movies are just plain cool. You get to re-live the excitement (even though you know how the race ends) and the cars looked way better back in the day. Especially if you drove a Prius to the movie theatre today.
‘Race for Glory‘ is the story of the 1983 World Rally Championship, and the rivalry between the precise Germans at the Audi team, and their passionate Italian rivals at Lancia who are now seriously outgunned. Riccardo Scamarcio plays Cesare Fiorio, team manager of Lancia-Martini, and Daniel Bruhl is Roland Gumpert, the head of Audi Sport. Daniel Bruhl is such a good actor, and really gives the movie some weight. This is the guy who played Niki Lauda in ‘Rush‘ (2013) and was the voice of Lightning McQueen in the German language version of ‘Cars‘ (2003). That’s cinematic racing royalty!
But don’t be mistaken; this is not a Hollywood blockbuster. It doesn’t give the audience the immersive in-car racing experience that ‘Ford v Ferrari‘ did, nor does it have the incredible CGI. Sure there’s still plenty of race car stuff, but the movie focuses more on the characters than crashes. The cinematography is stunning, and it’s hard to tell if it’s actual 1983 race film, or a recreation. The aerial footage looking down on the Lancia 037 speeding through the forest gives such a great perspective into the challenge and danger which is WRC rallying.
But the cars are the stars of the movie. The Audi Ur-Quattro was the first racing machine to harness the capability of 4WD in rally racing, and went into 1983 a reigning champion. The Audi wasn’t an ugly car; certainly it’s box-fender flares were copied by many manufacturers, but the Lancia was a real beauty. The Tipo 151 was a low-slung, mid-engine sports car, commonly called as the Lancia Rally 037: it was the last RWD car to win the World Rally Championship. And with its iconic white-and-blue Martini livery, it won in style.
This movie hasn’t gotten wide release, so we gave $5 to YouTube and hoped our old TV would do the racing scenes justice. Oddly, no matter how much we tried to turn off the closed captioning, it couldn’t be eliminated. But once the actors switched from English to Italian, the dialog was not subtitled! The English scenes, which we understood perfectly, were captioned. But God only knows what threat the FIAT chairman made to the Lancia team manager. Funny thing is, when we tried the French subtitles, they worked perfectly! So, for a completely European experience, us English speaking Canadians read French subtitles of the German and Italian dialog.
Interesting post! Was not aware of this movie before today. Your solution to the subtitles was genius. Have made a note to find this film. Added to my TBW list.
The movie is brand new, Susan. I think it opened a week ago.
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There is only 1 theatre in Toronto playing it, so its much easier just to stream it (no matter where in the Universe yiu are).
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Wonder if you’ll have the same CC experience!
Whoops! Guess I read too fast. Thanks for reviewing. It does look very interesting.