Taking a break from surfing documentaries, filmmaker Dana Brown (aided and abetted by his father Bruce, the dude who made “The Endless Summer”) has literally hit the dust.
| “Dust to Glory” – 3 stars
Corny fun: Dana Brown’s skillful documentary about the Baja 1000, a breakneck motor race traveling dirt roads along the length of the Baja peninsula. It’s as corny as these things usually are, but lots of vicarious fun. Rated: PG-13 rating is for language, subject matter. Now showing: Egyptian. |
His fun new film takes him down to Baja Mexico, the site of an annual 1,000-mile-or-so race from the top of the peninsula to the bottom. The race takes place largely on dirt roads, many of which don’t look very much like roads, at breakneck speeds, with very little regard for rules or safety.
It is crazy. And people love it, from the drivers to the crews to the locals who crowd the race path with alarming intimacy.
“Dust to Glory” provides a skillful history of the race (it formally began in 1967) and a thorough account of the 2003 event.
The Baja 1000 had some fame in its early years for attracting celebrities to the course, including Steve McQueen and James Garner. (McQueen made the biking documentary with Bruce Brown, “On Any Sunday.”) Legit race-car drivers such as Parnelli Jones took a look at the wild goings-on, too.
To cover the 2003 race, Dana Brown has the advantage of video cameras, which means he can be dozens of places at once. You couldn’t make this movie this way using film cameras.
The race begins at dawn, with competitors rolling out in many different categories: motorcycles, trucks, cars, weird dune-buggy contraptions. There’s even a VW Beetle competition.
Maniac drivers barrel along through the incredible dust (vehicles are sometimes completely engulfed) along the non-existent roads. And even when the roads exist, they are sometimes lined with people – helicopter shots show just how close some of the cars come to sliding into families standing cheerfully along the route.
One maniac stands above all: Mike “Mouse” McCoy, who determines to make the race as a solo biker (the wear and tear is so brutal, most vehicles rely on teams of drivers). McCoy is babbling incoherently by the time he’s halfway through, but he’s game.
The race is dangerous enough during the daytime, but then night falls, and more fun is afoot.
Brown sketches a batch of the main competitors, and he takes time out for a few roadside portraits. These are as hokey as they always are in these movies, and the juiced-up narration about the grandeur of the race is overblown.
But it doesn’t matter, because this movie succeeds at exactly what it wants to do: It takes those of us too cowardly to actually participate in the Baja 1000 and plops us right in the middle of it. You can almost taste the dust.
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