Being Evel

Heart sank during the opening credits on seeing it's by the Jackass team but I shouldn't have feared. Far from the usual 'sports' hagiography, a surprisingly interesting and un-flattering portrait.

Reasonably entertaining and is bound to have a certain nostalgic appeal for men of a certain age, but as a documentary it's pretty conventional, even cliched, and it's not helped by the fact that its subject turns out to have been a massive twat. It tends to revel in the kind of Stars-and-Stripes reactionary conservatism that Knievel apparently embodied: there was 'a certain cynicism in the country at the time' we are told over footage of the Civil Rights and women's movements.

evel knievel was kinda a dick and john milius was responsible. fucking john milius.

An interesting documentary that doesn't shy away from criticising it's subject even though it obviously comes from a place of hero worship.

I neither know of Knievel nor interested in motor/extreme sports. It was the gaze into insatiable psyche that kept me watching this.

Had the toy as a boy - now I know who he was.