Full Throttle

Obviously there are not many serious motor racing fanatics reading IMDB or this would have a lot more comments. Screened in 1995 this is still talked of as perhaps the best motor racing drama ever made for UK tv (period or otherwise).

Rowan Atkinson is of course a motor racing nut in his spare time and is a regular attendee and racer in classic events in the UK. He is serious in this interest and much to his credit this is an entirely serious and effective recreation of an incredible true motor racing story from the 1930's.

The dominance of the British Bentley team in european racing is coming to an end. The dastardly Germans have created a thing called a "supercharger" (or "blower") which enables their Mercedes "silver arrows" to out-power the giant, normally aspirated Bentley cars.

The answer is to fit a "blower" to a Bentley but the stuffy head of the Bentley factory won't have it. It takes a private driver (RW - convincingly daring and dashing) and his mad little team to create the "Blower Bentley" and the story of how the private Bentley team and the works team take on the might of Mercedes at Le Mans one final time is straight from a Boys Own annual.

If you are a sports fan or a car nut I would highly recommend this. If you an an Atkinson fan it it shows an unexpected talent for straight acting but don't expect Rat Race.

I bought this DVD on the erroneous assumption that it was a comedy. With Rowan Atkinson as the star, my first thought was of "Mr. Bean," "Black Adder" and most of his other terrific comedic roles. Not that Atkinson can't do drama, but because comedy is what I know him for. And even the picture on the cover of the DVD, with Atkinson looking, to me, like a villainous racer -- face and coveralls covered with dirt -- had me believing it was a comedy. I never even questioned it. But when I watched it I found that it is not a comedy at all. It's actually the true story of Sir Henry Birkin, a British race car driver of the 1920s and '30s. And it was fairly interesting. Probably would be of great interest to someone more familiar with Birkin. This was the first I've heard of him. But watching Rowan Atkinson is always a treat, whether he's going for laughs or playing it serious like he does here. So, this was not what I expected, but was enjoyable thanks to Atkinson. But for anyone looking strictly for comedy, this isn't the place to look. I probably wouldn't have commented on this, if not for the fact that no comment had been submitted for it. And if there had been one, that would've been helpful when I was making a decision to purchase the DVD. So, this is for you.

Rowan Atkinson's passion for cars is well known, so it was certainly with great pleasure that he was involved in this project of a television film (just 50 minutes long) dedicated to the biography of one of Bentley's heroes of the 1920s, Tim Birkin, winner in Le Mans twice, in 1929, for Bentley, and in 1931, with an Alfa Romeo, after Bentley was acquired by Rolls Royce and abandoned the competition in 1930.

Despite being short, low budget and clearly intended for television, it features an impressive collection of old four-wheeled glories in action, filmed with special enthusiasm and with a main actor in pure ecstasy, clearly delighted, to flesh out this character and for the opportunity to drive so many historic machines, on a pleasant journey back in time, to the automobile competition of the 1920s.

Motorsport fans will certainly love it. Rowan Atkinson's will criticize the lack of humor, as the film is much more a biographical drama than a comedy.

This movie is amazing. Its got the classic low budget feel. It feels more real than most new high budget movies. Some new movies feel to good to be relistic at all and ruines the experiance. Rowan Atkinson is an amazing actor. Youy can feel the pasion he has in his movie.

It sucks how some movies get forgoten about. Some of my favorite movies are lower budget movies. Making movies becasue you just love movies or a certain topic makes the movies feel more emotional than just a bigger budget and better lighting camera and effects. I just love this move so much for not trying to hard to do what it did.

It took me quite a while to track down a DVD of this TV docudrama. Rowan Atkinson is a good choice for Birkin as he bears some physical resemblance and is also a classic car nut. He manages (almost) to suppress his comedic tendencies! The cars all look genuine and aren't too "showroom" in appearance. Although the use of what remains of the real Brooklands for some racing shots, it would have been better to use eg Rockingham (for the banked track)as although Brooklands was renowned for being bumpy in period, it wasn't anywhere near the ploughed field the remaining bits are now! The other racing scenes eg LeMans, Ards, are quite convincing albeit a bit obviously done on the local disused airfield. Well worth seeking out if you can find it.

By the way, the poster illustrated above is for a quite different movie!