Lights, Camera, Action! | Lauda: The Untold Story (DVD Movie Review)

Lauda: The Untold Story (UK Rating: 12A)

Released in cinemas for just one day last week and now available both on DVD and On Demand, this is a studious look at the life and career of the remarkable Formula One driver, tracing his career up to and beyond the shocking crash at Nurburgring in 1976, as well as examining the safety changes made in the sport during the '90s. It's divided, rather clumsily, into five sections, making for a bumpy ride because of some ragged editing. That said, it starts in the right place - with that accident - one of the most famous in motor racing history.

Lauda: The Untold Story explains this in some detail, which means that those young enough not to remember it are given the proceedings in graphic detail. For those who recall the TV coverage at the time, it's a vivid reminder of a truly horrific incident, using newsreel footage and previously unseen material. The portrayal of its aftermath pulls no punches either. The most unforgettable scenes are at Lauda's press conference, just weeks after his car burst into flames. With the scars from his exposure to searing heat there for all to see, he fields insensitive questions like, "What does it feel to have an unnatural face?" responding in his typical, take-no-prisoners style, "It's natural because the skin graft comes from my own thigh."

While the film is meant to be about Lauda, he's almost completely absent from one section - the one about Formula One's safety improvements. They didn't happen until the 1990s and were a long time coming, given that in the 1970s there was a time when every month saw a driver killed in a crash. Safety was a low priority and medical facilities were almost non-existent but, while there's no doubt that Lauda's accident helped bring about some very necessary changes, the film dwells far too long on them, and in too much detail, at times feeling like a ham-fisted piece of PR for F1.

6/10

Good

Motor racing fans will be in their element with Lauda: The Untold Story. It mixes the start of the sport with its more recent history and the present day to provide the background to Niki Lauda's own story. Non-fans might pick up some interesting nuggets of information but will find the overall tone rather academic, and they will also find themselves wishing wish for more about the actual man in the title. For a film that's supposed to be his story, Lauda is sometimes noticeable by his absence.