On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: SENNA (FilmBuff).

SENNA

By Chris Claro

You never know what you’ll get with a sports documentary. Some are overlong and didactic, like HOOP DREAMS or Ken Burns’ BASEBALL. Some, like MURDERBALL and DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, take you inside an unknown enclave of sports esoterica. Bud Greenspan’s series of Olympic docs offer viewers dizzyingly close-up views of the danger and precision of elite sports. And Leon Gast’s WHEN WE WERE KINGS brought Ali’s charisma and danger to a new generation.

Where Asif Kapadia’s SENNA excels – pardon the pun – is in showing how one sportsman, Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, captivated and united his home country, even as he was derided by fellow drivers for his showmanship and selfishness on the track.

SENNA has all the hallmarks of a sports film, including an impossibly handsome, flawed hero at its center. Born of privilege outside Sao Paulo, Senna rose from go-cart racing to winning the F1 championship three times. Throughout his racing career, his fan base grew but he alienated his colleagues, none more so that Alain Prost, with whom Senna would have a rivalry that culminated in a controversial crash during the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix.