Le Mans: Paixão Pelo Desafio

I am in the middle of watching this series. I have not followed Le Mans, but knew it was a 24 hour torture test for both man and machine. I was amazed at some of the details that they went into concerning use of cutting edge technology and method of choice and training for the drivers. There was also a bit of history thrown in. The cinematography and editing were to my liking. I think I will go out of this knowing a whole lot more than I did going in.

I like the race 24h of Le Mans very much and I am happy they did this series about it. But, what is really strange is how they made it about the legendary endurance race and did not include the nine time winner (a record by far) over seventeen years of Le Mans career, gentleman with the nickname "Mr. Le Mans" - Danish driver Tom Kristensen. Without him and what he has to say on the matter - it is just not interesting as is should be, especially for the audience which is following the race from year to year. Imagine what he might have contributed. Sorry - not good enough.

This could have been a great series - the photography is excellent, the interviews with drivers and crews are fun and informative, and the exploration of the differing technologies within the competing cars is fascinating. Unfortunately, the series was ruined by moronic, reality-TV style narration and editing. The insincere, melodramatic tones of the amateur narrators that are piped through "small radio-speaker" sound filters made me cringe every time I heard them. The choppy editing speeds up and slows down cars to try to create more drama, and draws attention to itself and away from the race. This series is a huge disappointment.

Ugh, the voice-overs just kill this. The info and footage is great but whoever decided that the voice-over should sound like it was coming from a transistor radio from the 60s should never get another job in film. This just makes it difficult to watch. There are so many good story lines and just as you are enjoying the story they cut to some footage with a voice-over that is from someone clearly not involved in racing and then they make that worse by the fake radio announcer sound.

For some dumb reason, they have the woman sounding like she did her narration onto a 78 record. The record was then played back on a gramophone and the sound that came out of the horn was recorded.

Why? I have no idea.

I'm giving it a 4 because I turned the sound off and turned on closed captioning.

Also, blah, blah...Paul Newman, blah, blah, Steve McQueen. I hate when people try to justify something because famous or glamorous people like something. Good lord, these were just 2 guys that were talented in one aspect of their lives and were able to peruse a hobby that they were pretty good (or very good) at. They weren't f'in royalty, but at least they earned their spot as opposed to royalty who won the sperm lottery.