Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Wuchak "Downhill Racer" stars Robert Redford in his prime as David Chappellet, a taciturn loner from Colorado, who competes with an underdog American team for Olympic gold in Europe. Gene Hackman co-stars as the coach who tries to temper Chappellet's narcissistic and reckless drive for glory."Downhill Racer" came out late in 1969 hot on the heels of Redford's success with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Unfortunately it wasn't marketed properly and failed at the box office, but don't let that deter you 'cause this is a great film well worthy of your time.Although the movie is from '69 and therefore has obvious dated aspects, "Downhill Racer" was very innovative in it's time and holds up amazingly well to this day. In fact, aside from the ski paraphernalia & styles, I don't find the film dated at all. It somehow has a fresh quality and plays out like a docudrama similar to, say, "Saving Private Ryan," which was made nigh three decades later(!)."Downhill Racer" is reminiscent of 1966's "The Blue Max" in that both films are about an unlikable loner who is ruthlessly ambitious in his area of skill and functions as a fish out of water in the social circles to which he's thrust. It goes without saying that if you liked "The Blue Max" you'll probably like this one too. Both rank with my favorite films of all time.Downhill racing is an insanely hazardous sport in that the skier can reach speeds of 80-90 mph(!). Needless to say, one bad fall could take you out for life. Downhill is also an extremely individualistic sport, which is well pointed out in the story when a teammate criticizes Chappellet for not being a team player and another guy responds, "Well, it isn't exactly a team sport, is it?" Needless to say, it takes a very certain kind of individual to be successful at downhill -- someone who's ultra-daring and bold; someone with a wild, reckless edge balanced by the necessary discipline to train and compete. Redford effectively plays such a person here. He rises up in the ranks to become the American team's only true hopeful; the coach attempts to somewhat keep him under reigns and criticizes his individualism and recklessness even while he knows these are the very qualities that makes him a winner. Throughout the picture Chappellet and the coach act like they don't like each other at all, and it's true because Chappellet is a loner in the truest sense, but ultimately the coach is squarely on the young racer's side: When it comes time for the vital Olympic run the coach looks into Chappellet's eyes and confidently states, "You can win this." Take note of the stark contrast of Chappellet's plain hometown in Colorado and the glitz of the European ski resorts where he races. Also contrasted is Chappellet's throw-away hometown girl ("Do ya have some more of that gum" -- LOL) and the glamorous self-absorbed babe he hooks up with in Europe (Camilla Sparv of "Mackenna's Gold" fame); she gives him a good taste of his own bad self, if you know what I mean. Also of interest is his 'relationship' with his distant father, a simple country man who doesn't understand his son's preoccupation with skiing and the lack of financial gain thereof.While watching I couldn't help but think of Bill Johnson, the unlikely downhill gold medal winner for the USA in the '84 Olympics. Like Chappellet he was cocky & reckless and irked the European snobs with his bold predictions of Olympic victory. I have no doubt that "Downhill Racer" was one of Bill's favorite films. Unfortunately Mr. Johnson staged an improbable comeback bid for the 2002 Olympics that ended abruptly with a horrible downhill crash in March, 2001, leaving him permanently brain-damaged and in need of constant care. How the mighty have fallen! One cavil I have with "Downhill Racer" is that Redford is playing a person in his early 20s while he was 32 years-old during filming and looks it. But this is just nitpicking. Besides, Redford looks great at 32 or any age (and I say that with a staunch record of heterosexuality).Highly recommended.

jc-osms Rather like Paul Newman and Steve McQueen with their racing car movies this has all the appearance of a "jollies" project for Robert Redford, as he gets to ski up hill and down dale in the Alpine sunshine.The story is as light as powdered snow with Redford's small-town boy David Chappellet (what kind of lead name is that?) who with his eyes on the prize of Olympic glory, gets up the nose of, in no particular order, his coach, father and team-mates. Women are a mere side-show in his insular world as evidenced by a fairly distasteful pick-up scene with an old girlfriend in his hometown and then his selfishly petulant pursuit of, heavens above, a free-thinking, independent woman, played by Camilla Sparv. The ski-ing sequences are fine with some good stunt-work involving numerous bumps and scrapes on the piste but their effectiveness is dimmed by our subsequent familiarity with top TV coverage of skiing events down to the present day. Plus I'm not convinced that the Winter Olympics has the same mass identification with the general public as the summer games so that when Redford eventually wins his gold medal in the final reel, I couldn't really be that excited for him one way or another.Of the actors, Redford, best profile forward, doesn't need to do much and indeed doesn't, while Gene Hackman does better with equally meagre material. Ms Sparv does well as the chief female interest well who treats Redford the way he's doubtless treated every other woman in his chauvinistic way.In truth though, there's a lack of dramatic tension throughout for which the action sequences don't fully compensate and you don't care a fig for any of the leading characters. One of those films where the actors probably enjoyed making it more than the viewers did watching it.

mhlong After reading the several pages of comments, I wonder if some of the other reviewers really 'saw' this film. I grew up loving the sport of skiing and when the movie came out, I was almost obsessed with skiing. Unfortunately, I'm from the flatlands and so had to content myself for most of the year with vicarious experiences like Warren Miller films and marginal movies like Killy's 'Snow Job' and 'Hot Dog – The Movie' ('Better Off Dead' was a much better film from a skiing standpoint). Miller's films were fine, but those other two movies were trash. Of course, none of them, not even this one, could compete with 'Ski the Outer Limits' and 'The Moebius Flip', but those were in another league altogether.So, we have Downhill Racer…. the biography of Bill Johnson. OK, not really, because Johnson could give great interviews. But the brash American who believed only in himself, well, I guess Bode would now also fit. The humor in the movie was that when it was made, the European skiing community scoffed. Not that it was a good or bad movie, but they could not accept a plot where an American!!! could win the Olympic Downhill Gold. Remember this was before 1984 and Bill Johnson.Being an avid skier (even club racing) and reading everything I could find (several mags and two newsletters, besides many books), I had an awareness of some of the lesser known stories. And there was certainly some leeway taken in how the movie was presented. For example, at that time, World Cup skiing was pretty much amateur for the Americans and fully professional for the Europeans, although totally under the table (Avery Brundage – the last Olympic commissioner to have an absurd fantasy belief in amateurism - couldn't control the Europeans but he ruled with an iron fist over the Americans).Often, quite competitive American skiers were left at home because the National team budget didn't have enough money. Or how Karl Schranz (sort of who the character, Max Meier, was based on) was robbed of the Downhill medal in 1964 by Jean Claude Killy (or rather by the judges at the French resort where it was held). And that the American ski team was more than just male downhillers (oh, yes, with women barely mentioned in the movie during that interview with the rather naïve American reporter), when in reality it included slalom and giant slalom racers, some of whom raced in the 3 disciplines available then (the Cochrans, the Palmers, the Mahres are easy examples).The irony of the final scene in the movie, is that here, after all that David Chappellet put into winning the Olympic gold, by the time he did, he is no longer the young brash new skier on the block. The kid that almost beat him, was in reality a younger, brasher, newer version, that, looking at both as the one skis off the course and the other again accepts the accolades that had almost dried up, makes us think that at the height of his fame and glory, poor David Chappellet is now washed up, a has been, for the skiing community is about to move on to its next wunderkid.One or more of the other reviewers here erroneously wrote that the competition was a Super G. Well, since the Olympics allowed all comers (sort of, remember the Jamaican Bobsled team and Eddie the amateur ski jumper), they regularly 'dumbed' down the Olympic downhill courses so they became what we think of as today's Super-G. The Europeans knew that the real yearly races like the Hahnenkamm or Lauberhorn were the true tests of downhill racing. Also, the yearly winners of the World Cup as well as the World Alpine Championships were held in much higher regard by the racers and cognoscenti than Olympic winners, unless it was one of the chosen Europeans who won the Gold, of course.Redford, in an interview, said he especially liked the scenes that his character had with his father back home (in Idaho Springs, Ida…no, Colorado) during the off season. I found those dreary at best. It reminded me of that scene in 'Love Story' where the hero, who was ONLY captain of the Harvard Ice Hockey Team was sneered at by his father who had been an OLYMPIC competitor. Of course, I did get a little hungry for some Ritz crackers while watching Redford. I'm not sure how you can live in the mountains, that kind of setting, and not know anything about competitive skiing, or at least the Olympics. By the 60's thanks to Jim McKay and Wide World of Sports, most people had heard of Killy and were now commonly confusing Billy Kidd with Jean-Claude. Such is the price of fame.For a ski movie, the race scenes were riveting, the acting of people like Gene Hackman and Dabney Coleman was quite adequate, the beauty of Camilla Sparv was eye pleasing. It was a decent movie, but still confined to a certain time. Better to watch the movie as a part of a series in the career of Redford – Downhill Racer, Little Fauss and Big Halsey, ending with The Candidate, where he began to play larger characters. He was still the loner, but in a bigger and often more important setting. At least here he had broken out of his 'silly' movies – 'Inside Daisy Clover', 'The Chase', 'This Property is Condemned' and the like, even 'Barefoot in the Park' in some ways, his first starring movie. Of course, it was 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' that completely changed the way we looked at Redford, both past and present.

roy_imdb For anybody who follows international sports, the characters and organizations in this movie ring true. Whether you follow skating, gymnastics, skiing, or any other essentially solo international sports, you have seen the loners, the chosen stars, the politics, fund raising, and everything else that goes on behind and in front of the scenes.This movie captures those people and circumstances exceptionally well. As has been noted in the coverage of the Olympics, the parallels to the 2006 US downhill team are stunning. The fact that this movie was made in 1969, with the film style of the day, makes it quite dated. But it is exactly the dated fashions, music, cinematography, skiing equipment, and attitudes that make it a keeper.Downhill Racer remains the seminal skiing movie (unless one prefers the slob humor of Hot Dog: The Movie), but it's also about bigger themes. Redford is the quintessential American loner, out for his own goals and not interested in serving the needs of his sport, his team, or the international press. It's a character we've seen a thousand times in real life, and it's one who gets deified or demonized depending on his success in the field of sport.So, view this very dated movie in today's context. You'll be surprised how relevant it is.