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Le Mans

Le Mans

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.24
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: THE racing film
Review: This is the best film covering motor racing ever made. It also covers the peak era for sports car racing and has the greatest racing car of all time as its co-star (Porsche 917). What more could you want - Steve McQueen and several 917s.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Le Mans, only bested by Gran Prix
Review: This movie has it all. This movie does a better job than Gran Prix in revealing the true roller coaster of emotions that a driver goes through as he fights fatique and mechanical complications during one of the most grueling endurance races on earth. Steve McQueen's character is complex, and only Steve could have pulled this one off (for only Steve at the time was as well reknowned in the acting business as a first class auto racer). Only Gran Prix one ups this film, simply from the complexity of portraying an entire season, vice an entire race.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: For pure racing action, no other movie comes close.
Review: Most auto racing movie makers for some reason seem to feel there must be a non-action story line as the main emphasis of the movie. Here the concentration is on the actual racing, with far more of the running time devoted to in-car and on track footage. An actual Porche 917 race car had the rear of the car cut out and a camera mounted in the back of the car, resulting in unusual low angle shots of cars at high speed inches away from the camera car. Other cameras inside the car give great views of cars ahead, passing slower cars, and also the instrument panel of the camera car. The sound track is also real race cars, and any car racing enthusiast will love that.

There is enough non-racing action to hold the story line together but not so much as to cause the action to lag. Great acting there is little of, but that was not the intent of the movie, rather the intent was to make the viewer feel he or she is part of the event, and it does that job very well. If anyone has any interest in race cars and racing, this is the one to see.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Greatest racing action film ever.
Review: Unlike most auto racing pictures there is no love story or much to get in the way of the racing itself. Also unlike others this was shot almost entirely at real,high speed. There are no slow driving with sped up camera speeds it is the real thing. The racing and the crash sequence are the best ever filmed. Steve Mc Queen did all the driving sequences himself and it shows the truely gifted driver he was.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Le Mans: Steve McQueen's Racing Masterpiece
Review: Perhaps the finest racing film to date, Le Mans is exceedingly atypical of the genre. It has minimal dialogue, few sidetracks of the artificial Hollywood-style human interest variety, and a steadfast focus on the subtle beauty of the sport. Superb cinematography pays homage to an era long-gone in motor sports, as the film concentrates on the realism of racing and the question of why some pursue such a dangerous sport despite its obvious risks and human casualties.

Le Mans would serve well as a stylistic blueprint for the upcoming Sylvester Stallone project (as yet to be filmed) on Formula One racing. Long on substance, full of intense visual and auditory imagery, and fully aware of the great history of the event, Le Mans captures well the spirit of its namesake. END

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Probably the first "grown-up" movie I ever saw
Review: This film probably sparked my life-long love affair with motor sports. This is a movie about an bygone era when auto racing still was, as Steve McQueen puts it, "a professional blood sport."

The minimal subplot is almost disposable. It has something to do with a rivalry between McQueen and another driver, both romantic and on the track.

The heart of this movie is the racing scenes. Porsche 917's and Ferrari 512's racing wheel to wheel, their howling turbocharged 12-cylinder engineers propelling them down the straights at up to 240mph, sometimes demolishing themselves in a slow motion ballet of carnage. While fictional, this film gives you more of a feel for what it must have really been like than watching the real race live on TV did for me this year.

I have only one complaint. It's not out on DVD yet!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: LeMans
Review: A great story of a great race. Done as well as it could be done. Real cars and real tracks were used to great effect. It and Grand Prix are the best two movies on racing I have seen. It was so real I believe one driver was severly injured during filming.
If you like racing, this is one of your best opportunities.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The best racing movie ever, as it was meant to be seen
Review: Sure, this film is not Citizen Kane or anything, but it is really quite good. I guess people tend to write it off because it is a "racing movie". It does have a simple plot and, as many others have pointed out, minimal dialogue. But this film says a lot in a subtle way -- something you never see in movies today.

The late 60's/early 70's were such a great time for cars and racing, and this movie captures the essence of that period in motorsports. Actually the cars themselves would not look out of place at all today. But this was a long time ago -- before NASCAR ;-) -- and these cars were not so high-tech as they might look. Racing was far more dangerous then than it is now; drivers were getting killed all the time as I recall (I was 14 when "Le Mans" was released). "Le Mans" really makes you feel what it must have been like to be a racer back then. It is a study of contrast between dull, quiet "real life" outside the race and the vitality, urgency and danger of competition that motivates the drivers.

"Le Mans" is one of the only two good auto racing movies that were ever made. (The other is Grand Prix, which is unfortunately not yet available on DVD.) It is a completely visual movie -- you MUST see the DVD version in widescreen format, with its superior video/audio quality; way too much is lost in the VHS version. The action footage is truly incredible, especially when one considers that this was 1971. If you like cars/racing and movies, "Le Mans" should be in your collection.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It will bore you indefinitely....
Review: The photography is really amazing, but the movie is simply boring. Al least, at the end the victory goes to Larry Wilson, not for Steve "Michael Delaney" McQueen, what is a good turn to the movie. (The POrsche cars wew driven by pilots such as Jacky Ickx).

The idea of this movie was to document the suspense, drama, power and energy of a 24-hour race at Le Mans (the 1970 edition. It accomplished its purpose, but it's not a great movie experience.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Steve McQueen rules!
Review: This is the ultimate racing movie! Forget garbage like "Days of Thunder" and "Driven", this is the real deal. You can tell Steve's passion for racing in this movie. Of course once you've seen it, you'll have to read "A French Kiss With Death" which tells the tale of the making of "Le Mans" and the race itself.


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