Review of Breaking Away (1979) by Andrew A — 10 Nov 2010

If its been 15 years since I've seen MY BODYGUARD its been 25-years since I've seen BREAKING AWAY . . . / all "this little fella" talks about is "Riding with 'The Italians'" in the bicycle race . . . he idolizes The Italians and when he actually meets The Italians, he finds The Italians to be a bunch of creeps who hate him.

Its a coming of age film where the little fella learns of his own self-worth . . .

We don't have to look outside ourselves to "find greatness" we are GREAT PEOPLE ourselves from the inside out!!!!

Here's the plot from wikipedia (I'm not making it a habit to include plots from wikipedia, its just when its been over a dozen or so years since I've seen a film, I'd like to be able to "tell" my readers more about it).

Dave (Dennis Christopher), Mike (Dennis Quaid), Cyril (Daniel Stern) and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley) are four working-class friends, living in a college town, who have recently graduated from high school and are not sure what to do next. They often clash with the more affluent Indiana University students in their hometown of Bloomington.

Dave is obsessed with bicycle racing. His down-to-earth, blue-collar father, Ray (Paul Dooley), is puzzled and exasperated by his son's love of Italian music and culture, which Dave associates with bicycling, and his precious Italian Masi road racing bicycle. However, his mother, Evelyn (Barbara Barrie), is more understanding. Dave masquerades as an Italian exchange student to romance a university student (Robyn Douglass), even serenading her one evening outside her sorority house window.

When a professional Italian bicycling team comes to town for a race, Dave is thrilled to be competing with them. However, the Italians become irked when Dave is able to keep up with and even talk to them in Italian during the race. One of them jams a bike pump in Dave's wheel, causing him to crash. This leaves him disillusioned and depressed.

Dave's friends soon persuade him to form a cycling team for the annual Indiana University Little 500 bicycle race. They race under the name "Cutters" (a euphemism for "stoners", the industrial stonecutters who worked the Indiana Limestone quarries of southern Indiana) against university intramural teams. Dave is so much better than the other competitors, he rides without a break and builds up a large lead, while the other teams have to switch cyclists every few laps. However, he is injured and has to stop. After some hesitation, Moocher, Cyril and Mike take turns pedaling, but soon their lead evaporates. Finally, Dave has his feet taped to the bike pedals and starts making up lost ground; he overtakes the leader on the last lap and wins. Dave's father is immensely proud of his accomplishment. Dave himself later enrolls at the university.