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Men and machines flying through the air or tumbling along the ground at 140, 150, 160 miles per hour. The world of 500-cc, two-stroke motorcycle racing is all about pushing the envelopes of both flesh and metal, and often those envelopes get ripped open and bones get broken. Miraculously, lives seldom are lost.
As exciting as it sounds, Mark Neale's documentary about Moto Grand Prix is only going to appeal to aficionados, as the film quickly becomes a mess of names, faces and accents. Neale's main crime is the lack of any overarching story. Even documentaries need structure.
Here though, we're presented with snatches of biographical montages on a select group of racers, footage of those racers tearing up tracks or flipping heels over head, and talking heads of journalists and truck drivers. Most fascinating out of the entire cast is actually the man who patches them up: Dr. Caldio Costa. A frustrated Moto GP racer who studied philosophy as well as sports medicine, Costa embroiders every sentence with references to Greek mythology.