American Flyers (1985)

Racing Scenes
I enjoyed this movie more than I did Breaking Away simply because it had more racing scenes. I also enjoy true stories but the bike action was the best part!

Old Memories
A small film that I saw first as a young father, "American Flyers" overcame, for me, its weaknesses in plot (a bit hackneyed) and script (overly obvious) with an unabashedly sentimental ending that, against all my better judgment, arrowed straight to my heart. What can I say? This film got to me.

Kevin Costner and David Marshall Grant play brothers, Marcus and David Sommers, estranged by circumstances surrounding the illness and lingering death of their father. A sports physiologist, Marcus blames his mother, played here with two notes by veteran Janice Rule (her last film), for her lack of strength during the final days of his father's illness. (The father died by cerebral hemorrhage and has passed a predisposition to one or both of his boys.) Younger brother David has forgiven his mother her frailty for he remains at home with her, a bit adrift of commitment. Sparks fly when Marcus returns home to challenge his younger brother to make something of himself by training for a brutal bicycle race, the "Hell of the West." (The "Coors Classic" by any other name.)

As expected, competitive cycle training slowly binds the boys, while the spectre of sudden illness redeems the family dymanic. Yet for me, this film breathes for those of us who have stuggled to overcome family dysfunction to find the thick, life-giving blood beneath. The family Sommers' final hug, still shot, with that 38-special-like song from Glenn Shorrock, like a dream from the Eighties, rising over the credits, it gets me everytime.

Do you know the two actual bike racers in this movie?
Eddy "the cannibal" Mercxx was the person who started the race. They used his nickname for the principle bad guy in the movie when they called him the "cannibal".
The other real bike racer is the hitch hiker, girl friend of David. Alexandra Paul. She is an ironman triathlete in real life, although that came later in her life than when the movie was made.