BEFORE: Almost done with the Redford chain, I'm ending with the sort of "sporting" movies - we had sailing in "All Is Lost", umm, let's say hunting and trapping in "Jeremiah Johnson", and now tonight it's skiing. Skiing isn't really a sport to me, it's just controlled falling down a mountain, right? I mean, gravity is doing all the work. Same with bobsledding, luge, skydiving and diving into a pool - ever hear people say, "It's all downhill from here..."? That means it's easy. I'm more impressed by cross-country skiing, and that biathlon event is quite thrilling (skiing and guns, what could go wrong?). You know what would be really impressive? UP-hill skiing. Why isn't that part of the Olympics? Set that up, and I think you'd have something.
THE PLOT: Quietly cocky downhill racer joins U.S. ski team and clashes with the team's coach.
AFTER: I've had to watch a lot of sports in the last 18 years for work reasons, and I've fast-forwarded through a lot of sports I don't care about, like golf and NASCAR racing - skiing is one of those sports. I used to record all of the televised skiing events, and also the winter X-Games, because I had to research who made the commercials, and if there was a new Mountain Dew or Red Bull commercial, it would probably air during something like that. The Olympics? Forget about it, that would generate a ton of new commercials I had to tape and bring in to the office.
So I have to re-state that I don't really get skiing. And a movie about skiing doesn't really make we want to learn more about it, not the way that a movie like boxing gets me interested, or a baseball documentary about the finer points of throwing a knuckleball. This film doesn't even really contain much technical information, except occasional reports about the type of snow on the mountain, or how icy the course is. Even the different types of skis available - when questioned by a ski manufacturer, Redford's great insight about the man's product is that they're "all right". In other words, they're like every other pair of skis ever.
So I have to conclude that there's not much strategy involved in skiing - you just go as fast as you can, and try not to wipe out. That's it. See, there is a lot of wiping out in this film, so I assume that makes a run a DQ. Just get down the mountain a few seconds faster than the next guy, that's all there is too it.
Wait, I guess there is one bit of strategy mentioned. When Redford's character joins the team and is seeded 179th in the starting order, he protests. Apparently the snow at that point will be worn out by all the other skiers, so he chooses not to ski. A lot of the other skiers wipe out, so he advances in the rankings by not skiing. This sounds a lot like the Marx Brothers getting paid 10 dollars an hour if they play music, and 12 dollars an hour to not play.
You also have to remember that when this film was made, there were strict rules about Olympic athletes having amateur status, which meant that they couldn't have been paid for sports, anytime ever. I think the rules have been relaxed a bit since they made those basketball "Dream Teams" with all those NBA stars. And yet people still wanted to compete in the Olympics, to gain fame and fortune. Well, fame anyway.
Redford's character gets involved with a European girl, who works for a ski equipment manufacturer, and at some point things fell apart, but I wasn't sure if it's because she was only seducing him to get him close to the ski maker, or if in the end she was just as shallow and self-centered as he was. Maybe it was a little bit of both, but I don't think it was made clear.
Plus, why is an athlete being chiding here for being cocky? Cocky is just a lot of self-confidence, right? Why would you want athletes entering a race who don't believe in themselves? For that matter, why would atheletes who don't think that they can win even want to race at all? And why is it called a "ski team" if it's not a team sport? Everything in skiing seems to be based on individual performance.
Also starring Gene Hackman (last seen in "Postcards From the Edge"), Dabney Coleman (last seen in "This Property Is Condemned"), Jim McMullan, Karl Michael Vogler (last seen in "Patton"), Kenneth Kirk, Camilla Sparv, Walter Stroud.
RATING: 4 out of 10 stopwatches
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