Nice guy finished first
thriller No Way Out, Tom Cruise in Cocktail and the volcano in action flick Dante’s Peak.
Returning to his homeland, and his long-time love of racing (which has stemmed from his first ever short film about Burt Munro and was later demonstrated in his biopic of the rider in The World’s Fastest Indian), Donaldson has obtained intimate access to Bruce McLaren’s family and friends to paint an often touching, albeit resoundingly positive, portrait.
This positivity may be because McLaren simply was a really nice bloke. The film sticks to happy footage and charming black-and-white photos of a handsome, jolly, Kiwi chap whose childhood was mired by illness which saw him spending two years flat on his back, but always with a cheerful grin. Donaldson employs a pretty seamless meld of archive footage, dramatised scenes and voice-over interviews.
It’s very interesting, and at times we are moved by the drama of a key race or the tragic loss of a racing colleague. But it’s no Senna, a biopic it will inevitably be compared to by dint of its F1 connections and inherent tragedy. Whereas Senna used its driver’s-eye camera work to get the viewer’s pulse racing, McLaren feels like a more leisurely, less urgent affair.
Neither does the film touch on anything which might cast a shadow on McLaren’s gleaming reputation. It’s hard to believe any winner on the world circuit would have made it through the 1960s ignoring the bevy of beauties who threw themselves at F1 heroes, but McLaren comes off as spotless: the first Kiwi to break through to the world stage, and the youngest (at his time) to win Formula One, but with nary a professional rivalry nor personal hiccup. Everyone speaks in glowing terms about his innovation and smarts, and if the film doesn’t give us any grit, well maybe there wasn’t any – proof that nice guys can finish first. - Sarah Watt