Well, we won! How does one comment on that without sounding smug?
In a way, this movie has all the advantages of "Titanic" or "Apollo 13": it's a terrific story, it doesn't need any sub-plots or dramatisation. Telling the story just like it is is going to be drama enough.
John Wood plays an excellent Alan Bond. Mind you, his various Bond body mannerisms look like they were modelled on the scenes of Alan Bond going to court on those bankruptcy and fraud charges, but that's another story.
To non-Australians, it might be perhaps a little difficult to understand how much this event caught the imagination of the non-yachting public (such as I). It really was a huge event. And it's easy to see why. The NY Yacht Club was portrayed as monstrously unfair, bad, arrogant: all those things that make one want to graffiti "Yankee Go Home" on your nearest US embassy. One telling line from the movie, when one of the Admirals from the club says to another: "if we lose this, then we're just a bunch of guys in stoopid striped pants".
The Australians, on the other hand, were everything that your average Joe wants to be in his dreams. Even though Bondie was a millionaire, he is seen as an underdog, who with a clever invention (the famous "winged keel") actually stands a chance of winning, even (and especially) if the competition is seen as being "unfair". And of course being a historical drama, you know the outcome, so you know that no matter how corny or jingoistic it becomes, it's gunna have a happy ending. How could you not want to see it? :-)
Having followed closely the real events of the day (something that I would venture was not possible when viewing "Titanic"), I found most interesting the things that this movie showed that were _not_ shown in "real time" as events unfolded. The various legal battles. The legitimate (as distinct from via-espionage) opportunity that the NYYC had to see the alleged winged keel; an opportunity that they "blew". The allegations of the water-filled balloons across the bow.
No review of this movie would be complete without mentioning the most important ingredients that I recall the real event of the day had. The Boxing Kangaroo flag (purchased for the 2000 Sydney Olympics); the Men at Work song "Down Under"; and the Vegemite on the breakfast table.
What about things like character development, social relevance, hidden deeper meaning: all those other things that some movie critics want? Well, what about them??? They don't exist in this movie, OK? You want that, go see a Shakespeare movie! This is a historical adventure drama movie. You got history, you got adventure, you got drama. Any part of that you don't understand?
