Good movie but grossly overrated

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Sport movie about an egoist man who unites a notorious ski team , it's mainly a character study . It deals with a small-town egotist named David Chappellet (Robert Redford in one of his earliest protagonists roles) joins U.S. ski team as downhill racer and clashes with the team's coach (Gene Hackman). Meanwhile , David falls in love with a beautiful and glamorous girl (Camilla Sparv who married Robert Evans of Paramount) Colorful and vivid story about ski sports with Robert Redford as a bleak and grimly character as a quietly mean-spirited sportsman who joins USA Olympic Games Ski team . Lots of dazzling skiing action leading to an thrilling highlight . Redford did all his own skiing for this , ten days before shooting began , he accidentally drove a snowmobile over a cliff, tearing his tendon and requiring seven stitches in his knee . Redford's good performance and a gorgeous Camilla Sparv ; however , both of them are two unappealing characters . Fine secondary cast but playing brief interventions as Karl Michael Vogler as Machet , Kathleen Crowley as American Newspaper Woman , Dabney Coleman as Mayo and cameo by Natalie Wood who appeared, well-disguised, as an extra in some crowd scenes ; she worked as an assistant behind the scenes , she typed script revisions, shopped for wardrobe and props . Worth enduring for the spectacular ski scenes that are justly the basic visual splendors . Astonishing Alpine location cinematography being splendidly filmed by cameraman Brian Probyn . Shot on location in Boulder, Colorado, USA (training track scenes) Durango, Colorado, and Kitzbühel and Europe : Tyrol, Austria , Wengen, Lauterbrunnen, Kanton Bern, Switzerland . Atmospheric and enjoyable musical score by Kenyon Hopkins . Michael Ritchie's visceral feature film debut for which he was hired by Robert Redford ; being efficiently directed but hard to amusing . He started his career as an assistant producer in television in the early 1960s and repeating with Robert Redford in ¨The candidate¨. Sports continued to be his forte, his greatest box-office successes being satirical movies about baseball ¨Bad New Bears (1976)) and gridiron ¨Semi-Tough¨(1977)) and ¨Wildcats¨ (1986) . With less commercial success , he took a humorous swipe at beauty pageants with the underrated film ¨Smile¨ (1975). While his work became more mainstream during the 1980's, it does include a few memorable comedies, notably ¨Fletch¨(1985) and its sequel ¨Fletch lives¨(1989) . But also made agreeable comedies such as ¨The survivors ¨, ¨The couch trip¨, ¨The golden child¨ , ¨A simple wish¨ and even Noir film as ¨Prime cut¨. Rating : Acceptable and passable .

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.

Old-fashioned sports drama given very modern look and feel, mixing 16mm footage with 35mm for an exhilarating visual effect. Robert Redford is quite good portraying an extremely self-assured skier from Idaho Springs, Colorado who is picked as a substitute member on an American team competing in Europe; after a humiliating wipe-out fails to derail his ego, he returns to the States for training with the Winter Olympics just two years away. "Downhill Racer", directed by the debuting Michael Ritchie, is a low-keyed character study masquerading as a sports film--and yet the skiing action is what most viewers end up remembering. The two halves are blended together thanks to punchy editing and the handsome presentation (and by the personalities brought forth by Redford and Gene Hackman as the team's coach), though the macho-subdued screenplay is rather verbose. Once we understand that Redford's David is a self-centered bastard, there's nothing much else to him except his good looks, and the women characters on the scene (there are no female athletes) are sex-objects or uninformed targets for ridicule. A few terrific moments, though the opening credits sequence is really cheesy and Kenyon Hopkins' score is occasionally overwrought. ** from ****

In this country, every four years, our nation participates in the Winter Olympics. The finest athletes from every state strive to be chosen as part of the U.S. Olympic Team. Together they represent America. The pride of our nation accompanies these men and while abroad, our hopes and our dreams go with them. The scenic Winter Olympics are the idyllic backdrop for this film which is called " Downhill Racer. " The title role for this movie went to Robert Redford who plays David Chappelet. He is arrogant in his abilities, his performances and his skills which promise the future. Few doubt he will win a Gold Medeal. However, Eugene Claire (Gene Hackman) his coach is concerned Chapplet is a 'Hot Dog' racer, fast, but prone to accidents and unpredictable. Furthermore, he is not a team player. Instead he believes he can win without the rest of his companions. This presents a problem for Claire and America's top athletes who work to be a cohesive unit. At home and on the slopes, he must decide if he's capable of winning the Gold, but for whom, himself, his teammates or his country? The speedy downhill action sequences are beautifully crafted and the storyline is followed faithfully. An exceptional movie for the wishful, armchair athlete in all of us. ****