American Flyers

American Flyers

“American Flyers” recounts the story of a bike race called “The Hell of the West,” as well as the relationships within a sick family. Apparently that is too much for the movie, so it gives us a bike race with large unanswered questions.

This is one of those stories in which all the personal crises conveniently come to a head at the finish line, and perhaps there wouldn’t have been so many giant inconsistencies and loose ends and puzzles if they’d just adjusted [missing text] accordingly.

David Grant stars as an 18-year old kid brother in St. Louis who works out on his bike every day, hoping to become half as good a racer as his older brother (Kevin Costner), a doctor in Madison, whose mother is played by Janice Rule. A painful dinner scene early in the film presages conflict within the family; it seems that dad died hard, and mom didn’t do anything during his last two weeks on Earth to make it easier for him to pass away. The picture never says what she didn’t do indeed, that’s only one of many mysteries.

Dad died from a stroke caused by a bursting blood vessel in his brain; now Costner thinks Grant may have the same condition. He takes him back to Madison and runs him through tests that seem indeed to confirm this diagnosis. Then he changes his mind about telling him, and we embark upon another van-driving movie: The two brothers will drive across country to Colorado Springs, where they will begin competing in “The Hell of the West.” Alongside them are Costner’s girl friend (Rae Dawn Chong) and wouldn’t ya know? up drives Paul Simon’s sister-in-law (Alexandra Paul), who gloms onto Grant.

So then we get several contests: The brothers versus each other; then against Muzzin (Luca Bercovici), an ornery SOB who used to be married to Chong; the brothers versus Muzzin; all the racers versus death.

The race is run in three stages; in the second, Costner’s character begins bleeding from his nose and losing his orientation, so it falls to Grant’s character to win it for him. This leaves us with certain problems:

Does he have the family ailment or just a nosebleed? I ask because after that terrifying scene where he loses control and almost dies, they take him not to a hospital but back to his hotel room.

Is Muzzin as mean as he seems? I ask because early in the film he’s cruel to Chong and threatens to make her boyfriend “bleed”; then, following Costner’s character’s illness, he’s tender toward her and she’s sweet toward him. Then he tries to kill Simon’s sister-in-law.

What about mom? Since we never know what she did or didn’t do during dad’s last weeks, we don’t know how to take her (and neither does Rule). But she shows up for the finish of the race anyway, and there is a reconciliation which is happy or unhappy depending on issues which remain unclear.

To face these major and ambiguous issues, possibly indicating that the movie has been edited by removing some important scenes, there are a number of good things:

The film “American Flyers” was directed by John Badham, who had previously directed “Saturday Night Fever” and “War Games”. The bicycle race is shot really well and it’s thrilling even though we know who will win. The performances are all pretty good, especially Rae Dawn Chong’s quietly sweet role as the girlfriend.

There are some great supporting characters too like Grant’s trainer played by John Amos and his chubby teenage son played by Doi Johnson who hates exercising and wants to be the first black bowling star. It was written by Steve Tesich, who won an Oscar for writing another bike racing movie called “Breaking Away”.

However, at its core, American Flyers is shaky because it tries to dance around its own central problems.

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