Review: "FI, The Movie"

It's rare indeed, when a really great motor racing movie comes along; rarer still when that movie turns out be a really great motion picture.  Because the movie stars an actor of Brad Pitt's magnitude, and because the man responsible for pulling all the principles together, is seven-time world champion driver Lewis Hamilton( who is among the riches and best-known drivers in the world, as well as one of most influential), helped at the box office.  While the ancient Greeks exhausted every possible plotline and story contrivance, today, here in the West, there's not much left for we creative types to do but recycle what the Greek's originated.  The story line of "F1 The Movie' is quite similar to my novel "The Ragged Edge": of an aging, but noble, competitor, who has failed to fulfill his talent and ambitions, until his career is resurrected late in the game by a team principle who hires him to help a young, immature driver fulfill his promise.  Sound familiar?  Sylvester Stallone followed this very plot in "Driven", but lacked  the vision and creativity to pull it off. The movie flopped.

 

The point of the story is to illustrated the hero' s  inner need, which is not money or fame, but to achieve inner mastery.

 

At some point while writing the "The ragged Edge,  I feared I had over-played my hand, in the dramatized ending; but having watched "F1 The Movie the Movie"'s overly dramatic ending, I'm now glad I never tried to rewrite it.  Yes, those Greeks knew their art!

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