DeLorean

Cinema Verite is a great way to document an interesting event, as Pennebaker has proven over the years with movies like Don't Look Back and War Room. Unfortunately, what is interesting about the saga of the Delorean fails to come across in this style of documentary. This is endless design meetings, Dolorean being interviewed by press, union meetings. The first half of the movie is just about the creation of the car (even then, not from the beginning) and the failure of the whole project is barely glimpsed throughout. A documentary of this debacle would only work if you gave some context for what was going on, but you get little sense of what was supposed to be great about the car or what turned out to be wrong with it, and at the end you really don't know what really happened.

I can't think why anyone would think that this would be an interesting documentary. The only think I can think of is perhaps Delorean commissioned the documentary because he expected it to be a wonderful success story. Anyway, it's awful, don't bother.

This documentary follows the tail end of the gestation process of the DeLorean sports car, and offers unique footage not seen anywhere else. The story, for most, by now is well known, but the insights found in this relatively short (approximately one hour long) film are enough to give the impression that (a) building a car from scratch in a factory built from scratch by a workforce that has little or no automotive manufacturing experience is not an undertaking that can be taken lightly and, (b) all of those factors played a significant role in the ultimate downfall of the company. The recent passing of John DeLorean closes another chapter in the DeLorean saga, but this film provides a look at how close he came to doing what only a handful of people have been able to accomplish.