F1

1: Life on the Limit

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  • #134084
    Delta Golf Sierra
    Participant

    I saw this movie last night, and I was curious what others thought about it.

    Overall, it is a good documentary, especially the personality profiles of the drivers. The racing footage was outstanding, with great interviews from a host of drivers from different eras.

    However, I thought the pacing was a bit off, and it seemed to lose its focus at times. A more narrow focus on the evolution of safety in F1 would have been better, but instead it spends a lot of time on other topics, like the glamour of Monaco, and the Hunt/Lauda duel of 1976. This is done at the expense of the tragic day at Imola in 1994, which I thought was glazed over – there was no footage of any of the crashes that weekend, and little connection was made between that weekend and future safety advances. Once it moved out of the 1970s, it felt very rushed. Having just finished reading Sid Watkins book “Life at the Limit”, I thought there was so much more that could have been said about him and how he impacted the sport in the 80s and 90s.

    I would recommend it to any F1 fan, but it’s not without its flaws.

    #247715
    George
    Participant

    Well if they had covered that period more it would have basically been Senna 2. It was well produced but covered well worn ground, it was watchable for me but I didn’t really learn anything new from it. Someone going into it that hasn’t seen (m)any F1 documentaries might get more out of it.

    #247716
    Steven
    Participant

    I think it’s difficult to make a really comprehensive racing movie without making it a multi-part series or just really long to begin with. I loved Senna and Rush, but they’re both flawed. Senna: antagonizing Prost is not an approach I liked, whereas I really liked the approach Rush took in featuring both Lauda/Hunt, and I actually sympathized a lot more with the Lauda character rather than Hunt, despite Lauda being a ‘rival’. I thought the amount of racing in Rush was just too little.

    In any case, if any movie is done reasonably well, I’ll likely enjoy it. Movies have to be pretty damned bad for me to say that I hated it…

    #247717
    matt90
    Participant

    I just found this review, which I’m only sharing because the comment about Schumacher was irrelevant and pissed me off.
    http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/09/1-life-on-the-limit-review

    #247718
    Delta Golf Sierra
    Participant

    @steevkay “I think it’s difficult to make a really comprehensive racing movie without making it a multi-part series or just really long to begin with.”

    You’re exactly right, and that, I think, is the problem with this movie. It tries to be a comprehensive racing movie, with an underlying theme of safety. It would have been much better if it had been more focused on the safety aspects of F1. A positive aspect of both Rush and Senna is that they both focused on a narrow topic. “1” doesn’t seem to have any specific focus, and wanders from topic to topic.

    #247719
    Michael Moran
    Participant

    I downloaded it from ITunes & watched it on my flight from LA to Austin last night. I thought it was difficult to watch as it seemed to be very disjointed in the way it was edited. I would have liked to have seen more on what was done to improve safety between the 70’s & what happened at Imola and then also between that point & current safety technology. I felt they spent too much time on the Hunt/Lauda battle that was featured in ‘Rush’. I didn’t come away with the feeling that it was a great documentary. On the other hand…..I also watched ‘We are the Millers’ on the flight to LA & thought that was hilarious!

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