The personal lives and loves of four professional auto racers--played by James Garner, Antonio Sabato, Brian Bedford, and Yves Montand--are mingled with impressively photographed racing footage in this stylistically inventive but narratively tedious effort directed by John Frankenheimer.
The film follows the drivers through a number of important European competitions, including Monte Carlo, England's Brand's Hatch, and Italy's Monza, while their off-the-track affairs involve Eva Marie Saint, Jessica Walter, Francoise Hardy, and Toshiro Mifune, who plays Garner's corporate sponsor.
Frankenheimer pulls out all the stops to lend excitement to the racing footage--splitting the screen into ever smaller increments, mounting cameras to the cars to get shots taken inches above the track, and using slow motion--but ultimately his obsession with technique becomes wearying, and the
plot is simply not interesting enough to stand on its own. leave a comment