I AM STEVE MCQUEEN
US, 2014, 90 minutes, Colour.
Narrated by Robert Downey Jr.
Directed by Adrian Buitenhuis.
Response to this documentary will depend on how old the audience is. Steve McQueen died at the age of 50, born in 1930, died in 1980. He was a significant film star, emerging first on television, Wanted Dead or Alive, making quite an impact in the early 1960s with The Magnificent Seven and, then, The Great Escape. While clearly an action star, he impressed with his performances in The Cincinnati Kid, nomination for The Sand Pebbles, and The Thomas Crown Affair in the late 1960s. While he loved cars and speed, and his driving in Bullet is perpetual witness to this, but his film Le Mans was a commercial disappointment. However, he made a strong comeback dramatically with the Getaway, puppy on and in the blockbuster, Towering Inferno. He then withdrew from Hollywood, making only a few films, the last being Tom Horn, a Western.
Documentary covers all these films though sinners would have liked some comment on some of his more modest dramas like Love with the Proper Stranger and Baby, the Rain Must Fall.
Film critic Ben Mankieuwicz comments throughout the film on McQueen’s cinema career – with comments from associates, producers, martial arts trainers, stuntmen.
There is also commentary from Gary Oldman, Pierce Brosnan, stunt woman is the So we Bell. Their presence seems somewhat arbitrary although Pierce Brosnan starred in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.
So, fans will appreciate the overview. Those not familiar with the McQueen films may find it an opportunity to go back and view some of them.
The film also works on the level of a portrait of McQueen as the man, from the very difficult childhood, abandoned by parents, moving to orphanage, opened the possibilities of petty crime, having time in the Navy (and, with cleaning the boiler rooms for discipline imbibing asbestos which later killed him with cancer). He studied, found parts in television, then films. The word (rather irritatingly repeated and repeated) is “cool”. But the film also stresses that he was aggressively ambitious, a strong ego, short fuse, smart on how to keep the camera on him, annoying fellow actors, a rivalry with people like Paul Newman (and wanting equal number of lines to speak in The Towering Inferno), moving from big-budget action and doing his own stunts to some effective dramas.
The film highlights his hyper- action, of cars (and owning a wide range), driving fast, interested in competition, a love for and knowledge of mechanics.
There is also the witness of his three former wives, and his son, Chad, and some grandchildren. His son is incomplete admiration of his father. McQueen’s first wife calmly remembers meeting, courtship, marriage, children, family life, going on location to Taiwan for almost a year for The Sand Pebbles. And, it was the 60s. She does not excuse him but at the time of Le Mans, she left, her son having the option of where to live in staying with his father. Ali McGraw also gives a very interesting interview, explaining the situation with her marriage to Robert Evans of Paramount, working with McQueen in The Getaway, and not being confident, her comment about having been conspicuous for about five minutes, the difficult marriage, divorce. McQueen’s final what, Barbara Minty, the younger, seems to have been on McQueen’s wavelength and they got on well, the marriage cut short by his illness and death.
McQueen in fact has quite a cinema heritage – but whether he was someone one would like to meet in writing real life is another matter.
