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This is why so many racing movies are boring

posted 8 years ago by patchesdf-62-114042
3 replies | jump to latest

The biggest problem with racing movies in general is the story gets dragged off to boring subplots and tacked on romances, like Driven and Days of Thunder. Bobby Deerfield pushed racing so far out of the plotline this could have been a movie about a professional accountant if you just cut ten minutes out of it.

This is definitely NOT a film about racing. It's a boring shmaltsy romance chick flick that stuck Al Pacino in a racing uniform to trick men into paying to see this film with their girlfriends.

And what the heck ever happened to Al Pacino trying to figure out why his particular model of racing car crashed? I thought this was going to be about Bobby Deerfield locating this impossible to find mechanical defect like some race driver version of Hercule Poirot, and then that plot got completely abandoned and it's really just this dumb movie about a crazy dying chick having a final fling like some boring remake of Love Story.

It's no wonder this movie got forgotten by everyone. There's nothing in it that deserves to be remembered.

[–] kavan30013 8 years ago

I think you nailed it in that its just not a film about racing. Neither the book or the film was really about racing. It was the story of a race car driver and the girl who changed him. Bobby as others have said could have been a dentist or a cop or 10 other professions. The career was just a way in to the larger story which was about the impact love has on someone's life even if for a brief time.

And what the heck ever happened to Al Pacino trying to figure out why his particular model of racing car crashed? I thought this was going to be about Bobby Deerfield locating this impossible to find mechanical defect like some race driver version of Hercule Poirot

The point of those scenes was not that Bobby was ever going to locate it. It was showing Bobby was fixating more on accidents, dying, etc. than really enjoying his life.

I can absolutely see why people who want a race movie don't like it. When I first saw it I didn't like it. But after I read Remaque's novel and frankly got a little older I felt it was very underrated (particularly Pacino's performance).

[–] Stirchley 8 years ago

I saw it yesterday for the 1st time. What niggled at me the entire time was that Pacino could not drive a car when he made the Godfather so I didn't believe in him as a racing car driver at all. (Compared to Steve McQueen in Le Mans.) I almost bailed out of the movie, but eventually stuck it out to the end because I love Pacino. The chemistry between him & Marthe Keller was very good and Pacino was excellent in many of the scenes. (Loved the scene with the Italian woman struggling to translate Lillian's note.)

[–] [email protected] (2017) 7 months ago

If you learned that Pacino first to handled a gun in TGF, does it lessen the film for you?

Thing is, this is not a racing movie, nor a sports movie. It is a love story where one who happens to be a racecar driver. We watch films about accountants, teachers, doctors, etc who fall in love but those films don't focus on their professions, it focuses on the romance.