As 24 Horas de Le Mans

The reason why most racing movies fail, is because the Hollywood people try to tie in some cheesy plot to the highly professional sports of auto racing. In real life car racing, there is no dramatic love story, no struggle between good and evil, no rebel against the authority. In real life, racing is all about speed, physical strength, and concentration, anything else is just distraction.

Rather than put in a third rate plot to make a crappy story out of it like Driven or any other racing flick has done(including the Grand Prix), Steve McQueen's Le Mans has chosen to walk the different path, to bring the true spirit of car racing on the big screen. Who cares if there is no plot, no conversation, or no love story. If you are looking for those things, you are watching the wrong movie. The sound of the 917 blast down the Mulsanne at full throttle is well worth the time to watch this movie.

Sadly, this is probably the last of the true racing movies. The world today is impossible to make a movie out of real racing car(every single race car in Le Mans is real. The Porsche 917, the Ferrari 512S, The Lola T70). Driven uses mock CART car based on Indy Light, plus a whole lot of crappy CGI car, Grand Prix uses the F2 car that looks like the F1 at the time. A movie like Le Mans probably will never be made again.

If you are a petrol head and you have never seen this film you must have been born on another planet and I urge you to see it now. This film can be best described as motor racing porn. Incredible race car footage shot at the 1970 le Mans 24 hours race together with all the tensions and incidents of this famous endurance battle. Cameo appearances of famous race car drivers of the period. Full of staged crashes with cars that would now be worth $ millions. Not much of a story line and that was intentional, but who cares. This is motor racing at its best full of incident and as near to the real Le Mans as you can get. A veritable masterpiece of cinematic history.As fresh today as when it first hit the silver screen in 1971.

In parts this is classic cool 70s cinema. Widescreen jazz infused. In other parts it's down and dirty trackside racing. Never quite a documentary, but close enough to the action for anyone interested in motor racing. Le Mans is a fascinating race and this is every bit the love letter to it. Dialogue is sparse, McQueen is quiet and brooding. The plot is simple, although could've been a bit more engaging. It's about the racing though, pure and simple and with several sequences that are nothing short of staggering cinematic brilliance, it can be forgiven for any inadequacies elsewhere. With watching racing, it's as much about what's happening off the track, the strategy, the politics and it's exactly the same with this film, the production fraught with issues and squabbles, the trivia section on IMDB is riveting!

As the poster says, "Steve McQueen takes you for a ride in the country. The country is France. The drive is at 200MPH!" "Le Mans" is arguably the best film made about the sport of race car driving. What it lacks in story it more than makes up for in exciting race footage. No process shots, no rear screen projection. What you see is absolutely real. And Steve McQueen is, as always, just great. (McQueen drove race cars as a hobby so he knew what he was doing behind the wheel of that Porsche.) If you've never seen "Le Mans", rent it. But don't expect to see a regular movie, instead, expect to see a fine race documentary.

One of my Christmas presents last year was a copy of Michael Keyser's book "A French Kiss With Death" about the making of this movie (I had to drop a BIG hint!). Having just finished the book I watched the movie again with a much greater understanding of how it came to be made and the problems which plagued its production.

It is probably extremely rare for a major feature film to have absolutely no script - not even an outline - and no female lead after two months of shooting, but that was indicative of the sort of movie McQueen was determined to make. The race IS the story, and the story of the race is very well told. McQueen's racing experience, his need to have credibility within the racing world and the large number of real racing drivers and real racing cars involved all add up to an authenticity which exceeded that of Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix" and which is still unequalled. A couple of minor errors in the cars' paint jobs fail to dampen the reality of the on-track action.

It is true that the off-track storyline is a little weak, and some of the performances are a bit hammy, but McQueen absolutely nailed the "feel" of the Le Mans race. For this reason it is many race fans' favourite movie. It's certainly mine .