Movies

Chris Hemsworth goes full speed in ‘Rush’

I’m not a car guy.

To me, “automobile” equals “fuel-efficient metal transportation box with many airbags, preferably driven by my wife.” When we’re told, in Ron Howard’s “Rush,” that in 1970s Formula One racing, two of the best 25 drivers would perish every year, the word that flashed in my head was not “courage.”

It’s not like these drivers are in it for the promise of saving a life or changing the world or planting a flag in an unknown land. No, as one racer puts it in “Rush,” it’s pretty much “driving around and around in circles.

It’s pathetic.

“When I see a driver roasting to death in his flaming machine, I tend to wonder if his last thoughts are, “I did this for a trophy?”

“Rush,” though it will win no trophies, is fine filmmaking, a smart, visually engorged, frequently thrilling tale of boyish competition — inspired by a true story. At heart it’s “Amadeus” on wheels, only this time Salieri is the Austrian.

His driver Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl of “Inglourious Basterds”), the frowny grind who goes to bed early and gets married at city hall, shortly after telling his bride, “If I’m going to do this with anyone, it might as well be you.” Tell him he looks like a rat, and he defends rats: “very intelligent, and they have a strong survival instinct.”

His archrival, the clown genius and Sun God of this alleged sport, is James Hunt, a blond British Mozart of the motorheads who refuses to take racing cars seriously. His uniform patch reads, “Sex: Breakfast of Champions,” and he bonks stewardesses while still on the plane.

He’s played by Chris Hemsworth, who demonstrates true star power in this role: Picture a young Brad Pitt with the prairie-simpleton aspect replaced by James Bond’s sense of humor.

Chris Hemsworth portrays legendary British Formula One racer James Hunt in “Rush.”AP

Compared to him, Lauda gets to looking like Billy Crystal wearing a hockey mask (in other words, present-day Billy Crystal) as the two compete to be the best Grand Prix racer in Europe in 1976, a moment when the world’s fastest cars were even louder than the men’s sports jackets.

Howard gets some motor oil under his nails, has some fun.

He’s loose.

The racing scenes are roaring good fun, the colors are saturated, the camera work is a bit messy. Plus there are lines of cocaine and swearing and bare breasts. It’s sweet to think that Howard, at least in the early going, identifies with Hunt, his Formula One Fonzie. Because Howard, of course, makes laudable, polished, soundly structured and easily digestible movies that you need only see once.

“Ron Howard is my favorite director,” said no one, ever.

Howard has been working hard since he was 4 but has never once been kissed by genius. Meanwhile, the Quentin Tarantinos and the Paul Thomas Andersons whoosh by with scarves billowing in the wind, genius giving them lap dances.

Howard can’t help signaling where he’s going; if there’s a shot of a part coming loose, the car is about to crash. Announcers keep saying things that pictures alone should tell us.

It’s like Howard went to those public-speaking seminars where they teach, “Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, tell ’em, tell ’em what you just told ’em.” When Lauda’s girl says he’s all wrong about her car needing a tune-up, you know that three seconds later, Howard is going to cut to the car smoking by the side of the road.

It isn’t so surprising, then, that Howard’s sympathies turn to Lauda in the second half.

Aren’t guts nobler than gifts?

Maybe, but: This is a movie. We love stars who turn us on and make us laugh, and the less space there is for Hunt (colorful even in catastrophe, he loses his model girlfriend, played by Olivia Wilde, to Richard Burton), the more routine the film becomes. Stakes also are a problem: There is, apparently, no Wimbledon or World Series of racing. Instead there’s a complicated points-added system. One of the drivers isn’t even present for the last race. What kind of sports movie peaks with only one competitor on the field?

To clear that up, screenwriter Peter Morgan (“The Queen”) adds a somewhat awkward coda: The movie announces, a little too straightforwardly, that what it has really been about is . . . friendship. Yet never do the two boys seem to really hate each other. Which is how you know they don’t love each other.