DKosty123
It becomes very hard to watch this one from early on as the sequences appear to be just highlights from an afternoon on ABC's Wide World of Sports which used to run on TV when this movie was made. Yes, the skiing is okay but nothing special. No, it will not shift to the Harlem Globtrotters or Boxing during the movie.Redford is too old for the role as a stud skier going to the Olympics to win a gold medal. He meets a woman and has some very mechanical overnight exercise with her. His coach, Hackman, try's to motivate him though Gene does not get any really inspired Hoosier type speeches here. The film is about as bland a Redford movie as can be found anywhere.At least there are the lovely vistas that show up at times but often they are so short you see them for a few seconds and then pow your back to looking at bland stuff. What plot there is seems to be trying to capitalize on US Nationalism as the feeling of the thrill of victory for the US Skier is supposed to excite you at the end. Instead of that it is almost as bland as a poorly animated cartoon. Maybe that is why this one just does not come off.
jzappa
This buried New Hollywood pearl literally follows and watches a single-minded outsider from Colorado who, having netted a position on the American ski team upon the lay-up of another athlete, fanatically chases the objective of winning, with a full-blown indifference to etiquette and professional fine points. David Chappellet is a cad, a handsome rough-country bumpkin who veils his social anxiety and lack of knowledge with a bold mystique. In reality, he'd simply be an ignorant rube, but here he enters the abundant class of antiheroes who rallied round to characterize American movies of their vital, unforgettable period. Even then, Chappellet gave the impression of being an aloof, intractable character, and his tough, emotionally unapproachable nature maybe contributed to the film's market letdown. Regardless, his dogged insubordination was the yardstick tackle at the time: Consider Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, Hoffman in The Graduate, Fonda in Easy Rider, Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces and One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest, Gould and Sutherland in M*A*S*H. So while Chappellet's posture was wholly egocentric instead of rational, his impulse to beat the system and go his own way did not then feel as radical as it does today after the Reagan and post-Reagan eras of manufactured sports victories and champion cops who treat mass destruction like a football game.One of the film's trademark properties is hand-held footage from the viewpoint of the racers, which had never been done in a feature film before and was no Sunday stroll when the skier was doing over fifty miles per hour and the 35mm Arriflex camera weighed forty pounds. Whether or not one wants to speak in terms of its time, the film was and still is outstanding in its aura of the velocity, reverberation and pressure of competitive skiing. The chomp of the snow, the bone-freezing and muscle-constricting time lags on gusty mountaintops for a skier's rotation to come, the unstoppable tick of the timer, the archaic appearance of the skis and soft boots are all minutiae encapsulated with terse, nimble, confident strokes. Olympic connoisseurs were undivided in commending the film's correctness and candor, a scarce phenomenon in the far-fetched universe of Hollywood sports movies.Going for an induced documentary tactic considerably shaped how the film would come across, as did the selection of hard-core verite cinematographer Brian Probyn. Together, Probyn and director Michael Ritchie have here a more or less internal documentary about Redford's body, capturing it from angles that highlight his geometry in conjunction with his attractiveness. Multiple times, Redford stops to look in a mirror and observe himself with unopinionated, unaffected frankness.Their gritty, biting drama is stark, distilled to its densest connective tissue, as keen as arid residue. Several of the film's evocations of character and emotion go unspoken, staying within unless discriminatingly stimulated. Chappellet is a man of few words who won't budge by the narrowest margin, and it's consistent that the film frequently cuts away right when it appears he may be strained to say something, to be slightly more human than normally seems. All that he hides is suggested throughout his stopover back home in a Rockies town. His father, a friendless stick-in-the-mud, is a man of even fewer words than his son, and the curt, indignant, and self-centered outlook he squeezes out toward David's fortuity betrays all we require to go on about David's egocentric relentlessness.The undercurrent of the climax is whether or not Chappellet will allow being given the high hat by a stylish yet emotionally unavailable Swiss beauty throw him off on the slopes, and Ritchie's deliberate, atmospheric debut eschews all the frills that would classify American sports movies by the time Rocky emerged seven years afterward. It's gristly, cynical, painstaking, minimalist and declines to fabricate unwarranted enthusiasm. The film is courageous in securing itself to a character as minimally sympathetic as Chappellet, and Redford never loses sight of the role to comfort us that he, the actor, may be less conceited and selfish than the guy in the script. Chappellet is an unmitigated self-aggrandizer, and while Redford would play such parts again, he never did so quite this uniquely, with such craving invigorated by formative years. The ideas of Downhill Racer are lucid, having to do with the temperament of rivalry and the sacrifice of triumph. The brilliant closing line of Ritchie's important second film with Redford, The Candidate, "What happens next?" said by Redford upon being elected, is understood in the ending of Downhill Racer.
rpvanderlinden
I like the way that Robert Redford often played against type, subverting his image as the golden "wunderkind". In "The Way We Were" he had it too easy and was content to be mediocre. In "The Candidate" he kept sacrificing little pieces of himself until there was nothing left. In this film he plays a kind of sociopath who happens to be a phenomenal skier. He's a lonely man who doesn't understand why he's lonely, and hasn't made the connection between this and the fact that he's totally self-absorbed and doesn't really care about anyone else. He wants to be a champion, to have his picture on the cover of "Sports Illustrated", to have the classiest woman in the room. She would just be another trophy. When he engages in an impromptu race with a team member who wipes out, he's not the least bit fazed. He doesn't care. The scenes with his father, who's a farmer, are among the most uncomfortable in the film. You could cut the tension with a knife. They're two strangers.The character that Redford plays, with his ambiguous silence and apparent stoicism, is the type of character that people often latch onto because they think there must be something "deep" inside. The only time in the film that Redford's character displays any emotion is when his girlfriend (Camilla Sparv) suddenly shows up in the bar of his hotel, not having filled him in about her Christmas plans. He throws a temper tantrum. He realizes that he's not the centre of her universe.This is a beautifully made film with excellent cinematography, with many of the scenes done in a semi-documentary style. There's no hiding from the camera. It catches every little nuance. Director Michael Ritchie is known to me as a dark satirist, and "Downhill Racer" fits well into that mold.
tomloft2000
early Redford vehicle that parallels another success oriented film of his,The Candidate(also directed by Michael Ritchie).the story focuses on Dave Chappelet and his obsession with becoming a skiing champion.no one expects much from him at first,but through hard work and talent he quickly becomes a success.but away from the slopes he is not as successful-he is generally rude,crude,and selfish.director Ritchie harbors this theme in another sports film The Bad News Bears-that "success" has a price and one has to decide if the price is worth the cost.Redford and Gene Hackman give good performances and the skiing photography is first rate,but otherwise there isn't much to keep the viewer's attention.there is a side plot that includes a steamy romance between Chappelet and a ski rep's niece,but this could have been easily left out.look for an early appearance by Dabney Coleman(sans mustache).probably for fans of Redford or skiing only.BTW-my brother once lived in the movie's setting of Idaho Springs Co.
