Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, film review: A beautifully-made documentary

(15) John McKenna, Gabriel Clarke, 100 mins

Steve McQueen in the documentary ‘Steve McQueen: the Man & Le Mans’

When Steve McQueen appeared in Le Mans (1971), he was Hollywood's most bankable star, the “king of cool” – someone the studios valued so highly that they would have allowed him, as observed here, to make a movie based on the phone book had he so desired. Cars were his passion, and he decided to put all his energies into making what he hoped would be the ultimate motor racing movie.

This fascinating documentary stands as both an elegy for McQueen and an account of what turned out to be a disastrous and self-indulgent vanity project. The elements were in place for Le Mans to be a masterpiece. The hitch was that no one had come up with a proper script or storyline.

The directors John McKenna and Gabriel Clarke expertly interweave archive footage with never-before-heard audio material from McQueen, present-day interviews and film footage. They deal with everything from the Manson murders (McQueen was one of Charles Manson's targets) to the star's relentless womanising and his feuds with his business partners.

There is real poignancy here in the reminiscences of McQueen's former wife Neile Adams and his son, Chad. Like the Le Mans movie itself, the doc sometimes loses its focus but it is beautifully made.