BlueRiver86

+1. Watched it with my girlfriend this weekend on Netflix.

Agena

Downloaded from iTunes. Some of the footage of his managing the car through turns helped me understand.......I'm crap. That guy could really drive a car.

JackOlsen

I saw it for a second time today. This time I watched the 2-hour 42-minute version. It's the same basic film, but with more detail -- you get more time devoted to each section, more on things like Senna's religious views and a lot more interview footage -- especially more of (the older) Prost, and Richard Williams, Ron Dennis and John Bisignano.

I'm not sure if the revelation about Prost NOT wanting to retire from Williams was in the shorter version or not. He lays it out in detail in the longer version: he insisted on getting paid his full second-year salary partly because he did not want to retire, but felt the team was going to renege on its promise not to ever pair him with Senna. (For his efforts, he was rewarded with... spending a lot of time with Senna.) It's also got the piece about the 'wish you were here' message sent to Prost by Senna during the final days at Imola.

Beginning to end, the film is about as beautifully assembled a tragedy as you could ever imagine -- and you almost have to remind yourself that it's also an actual true story. That Alain Prost was one of Senna's pall bearers just hits you in the gut. It shows that even if you hated this guy (as Prost did, for many years), you also couldn't help but love him. He was a force of nature.

Is it his WHOLE life? Of course, not. You never see him turning in a so-so performance in a race. You never see the really great moments of other drivers of that era. You don't get to see him admitting (a long time after the fact) that he deliberately hit Prost in Japan. But every detail of an actual life can't become a drama that's this finely sharpened. The filmmakers had to make a lot of decisions about what to leave out. And they made a great film. It's probably the best movie of 2011, documentary or otherwise.

(I kept suspecting they were speeding up the in-car footage. I can't say if that's true. But it felt a little 'too fast' to me. But maybe that's just Formula 1, and I'm slow. )

BlueRiver86

I saw it for the first time in the theater with a bunch of friends who are not huge F1 fans. I did have to remind them it was a true story It's easily one of the greatest sports stories ever told, fact or fiction.

vbcracer

You can get it from "NETFLIX". I watched it on my "smart" TV.

perfectlap

Is this the NetFlix version?
I wasn't too impressed with this film from the standpoint of how epic of a subject this was. Much more time should have been devoted to Estoril, as the late Peter Warr described it being a shocking race to watch given how good the driver that day were and how Senna the newbie just walked alll over them. The documentary A Star Named Ayrton Senna was substantially better at giving you a better understanding of how Senna was different from the rest. It's also a bit strange to discuss Senna without also discussing how deep the talent pool was in his era. A casual movie-goer would come away believing that F1 in the golden era of the late 80's was only Senna and Prost which is the furthest thing from accurate. I would aslo have pointed out, like in that YouTube video of the current Mclaren pairing showing Hamilton driving Senna's McLaren, how much more skill and how unsafe the cars in the Senna era were compared to today. Personally I'd like to see someone like Michael Mann do a film about Senna. Eric Bana would be a good choice for Senna and Sean Penn would have been a good Prost and Russell Crow as Mansell. The best Senna film ever has not yet been made. I should shoot Mann an email.

Matt Romanowski

^^That is a pretty tough review!

I watched the Netflix version the other night with my wife. She was dead set against it and ended up really liking the movie. I thought it was great. Completely accurate and fair in it's protrayals? No, but nobody expected it to be. A great film about a great driver? No doubt. I thought it was excellent and would vote with Jack that it is one of the best films of the year.

blake

Watched it with my son on Netflix last week. Agree completely with Jack that it is a great movie, and one of the best of the year. Watching Senna's car control in the rain is unbelievable. The biggest learning for me was not necessarily Senna's greatness, but the political nature of F1. Definitely worth the time for any racing fan...

-B

perfectlap

don't get me wrong, it's a good documentary and certainly deserved to be nominated for an Oscar, but this film barely touches the surface. I also think you come away with a very different impression from who Senna really was, in both good ways and bad ways. This was Senna-lite if you will and could have used an much higher dosage of in-car footage, particularly from the early Lotus years.
I think Murray Walker had an old VHS video called Great Momments or something that had the amazing Mansell v. Senna show down at Monaco. Another great film but actually available on DVD is "On-Board", or something similar, which I'm pretty sure had some qualifying laps from the Prost/Mansell/Senna/Piquet era. Piquet blasting down the streets of Monaco in an 1,100 HP qualifying Brabham was like nothing you'll ever see.

2BWise

My initial impression was similar to yours when I saw it in the theaters. I was expecting much more in-car footage, but afterwards I realized that was never the intention of this film. All those videos have already been done. This film is not a rehash of the previous documentaries on the man and I appreciate it for that. After watching it a few more times without the initial expectations is easier to take it on its own merits.

If you really want an in depth look at Senna a movie will never be long enough. Go grab one of the good biographies. I read the book my Christopher Hilton (can't remember the name of the book off hand) last winter and that is very good at giving an impression of the man.

jenk12m

I watched it on Netflix a few days ago and thought it was a great movie. It was amazing seeing the in car footage of him handling those cars back then

multi21

As an F1 fan, I would have liked to have seen more, but the hardcore racing fan is but a small percentage of the viewing audience. The film has to appeal to a much broader segment of the population for it to be viable as a commercial project, hence, less in car footage and more story telling.

Keep in mind that the film is made through the eyes of a Senna fan, so it is much more bias in that way, leaving out what is considered "bad form" on Senna's part and Prost made out to be the villian and look worse than he probably was at that time.

Nevertheless, I thought the theater version was good and will wait to get the extended version and keep it in the library.

perfectlap

even if I was tasked with producing a "holywood" film about Senna it still would have gone deeper than this new film which afterall is still a documentary. I think the flawe was that they relied too heavily on the old footage, and wrong footage at that, which ate up a lot of running time. I would have limited it to the previoulsy unseen material and the really spectular stuff like the on-boards. And replaced that deleted stuff with new, but brief, interviews from the journalists like Roebuck and some of the greats like Schumacher, Lauda and Mansell. And some of those guys would have no issues really speaking their mind about Senna's misdeeds, Prost's political antics and how flagrant some of the cheating by teams was in those later years...Relying exclusively on film footage to tell the story will take you longer to get there and not give you the full effect in the end, just glimpses.
Point is you could have made this film shorter, deeper, harsher and a generally much more visual experience. Needs more cowbell.

p.s.
Senna would have been 51 years old now. I have zero doubt that if he were still alive he would be lean, hungry, racing and winning, perhaps even in F1.