CheerupSilver
Very Cool!!!
FeistyUpper
If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Salubfoto
It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
FirstWitch
A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
SnoopyStyle
David (David Marshall Grant) is ecstatic when his brother Marcus Sommers (Kevin Costner) visits home in St. Louis. Marcus is concerned about David failing at school. Their father died from a cerebral aneurysm and their mother is concerned that David also has it. There is family friction. Marcus works in sports medicine and convinces David to join him at Wisconsin State University. Marcus, his girlfriend Sarah (Rae Dawn Chong), and Leslie (Jennifer Grey) work for Dr. Conrad (John Amos). David gets a clean bill of health but he mistakenly assumes that he has the aneurysm. David, Marcus, and Sarah travel to Colorado for the bicycle race Hell of the West. Along the way, David picks up ex-hippie hitchhiker Becky (Alexandra Paul). Their biggest opponent is Sarah's ex Muzzin, friend Jerome, and the Soviet Belov.There are a couple of interesting new actors. Costner is pre-success and Jennifer Grey is pre-Dirty Dancing. The brotherly conflicted relationship is great. This has some family drama but the second half is where the bicycling sports fun exists. It explains the strategy rather well and the racing is done with drama. The racing looks great and the vista is beautiful. This is a solid bicycling movie.
Fluke_Skywalker
'American Flyers' features a strong cast who gamely (and yet sadly unsuccessfully) attempt to breathe life into a script that is leaden with an overflow of 80s melodrama; the most egregious of which is a third act switch-a-roo that feels every bit the cheap storytelling gimmick that it is.The race action is well shot, but dull and un-engaging. If director John Badham thought he was delivering a rise to your feet and cheer sports movie, he was sadly mistaken.Despite the best efforts of the impressive assembled talent, 'American Flyers' gets a flat long before it crosses the finish line.
derekryter
OK. not a cinematographic masterpiece, but there are some great nuggets from a lost period in American bike racing. The film came out in 1985, the year that Greg Lemond broke into the Tour de France and beat his teammate Bernard Hinaut, though The Badger got to win it (Lemond won his first the following year). And the Coors Classic was the best racing outside of Europe, with Team 7-eleven breaking into the continent. The Muzzin character with 7-11 was modeled directly after Alexi Grewal, who won gold in the 1984 Olympics and won the Bob Cook Memorial race up Mount Evans twice. He also had emotional/anger problems. The Soviet team was brought in after the cold war tensions and the Olympics, though they should have been a French team to make it accurate.You might even see a banner in the first stage south of Boulder with a Denver TV station logo and "Coors Classic" that didn't quite get hidden.A mushy movie, predictable turns, geographic mistakes in the footage, and some weak acting, but a good movie if you are in, or love, American road racing--and remember how it started in the Rockies.
Scott Burns
I get to be Siskel AND Ebert on this one.Two-dimensional characters, hammy acting, a disease-of-the-week storyline, and absolutely no surprises earns this one a "thumbs down".On the other hand...I have another thumb, and this one is way up! Director John Badham ("Saturday Night Fever", "Blue Thunder") really knows how to use the camera when things are in motion. In this case, it's a bicycle race with Colorado National Monument as the spectacular backdrop. Throw in the pulse-pounding soundtrack by Lee Ritenour and Greg Mathieson, and you can almost forgive the sappy soap opera.Not a great movie, but definitely worth the ride.
