Evel Knievel - 1971

 Here is a movie where, if it wasn't for the fact that it's in the 70s box set, I might have guessed it was from the 60s.  Cause it's lookin' pretty old. As a casual fan of stunts and stuff in general, I have heard of Evel Knievel before in my life. I think we all know of him as "someone who existed who did stunts".  This is also my first review written using voice to text on my phone.

Evel Knievel is a part biography, part fiction, part re-creation of the famous stuntman's life.  It's got a little bit of a time play thing going on, jumping forward and backward in the timeline of Knievel's life. It has a voiceover, it has re-creations of stories, and overall it tells a story of a man who pushed himself to extremities in terms of his job. Most things are not dwelled on, just touched on.  We see Evel as he meets his future wife, as he attempts his first paid stunt, and then we pretty much jump to when he's famous and he ends up injuring himself on a stunt. And then the movie pretty much ends. With lots of other random shit thrown in, and some very very untrue fiction parts.

 This phone refuses to except the word stunts. STUNTS. It puts stance, it puts just about anything else.

 Did I like this? Well I'll tell you one thing, I would've actually enjoyed a autobiography of Evel Knievel. That sounds pretty interesting to me? I don't know much about the guy, I would've enjoyed a re-creation of his life. However that was not this. This doesn't really explain much about him, his history, or for that matter where most of this movie takes place.  Too many things are touched on and never gotten back to. We see him meet his wife and take her on a bike ride where he endangers her life and he gets sent to jail, then later they're magically married with no story of what happened between. A lot of the stuff in his life is treated similarly.

Even so, parts of it were intriguing. The acting is good, the archive footage of the real Knievel is fun to watch, and the re-creations of the stunts are done well. It's gotten not a lot else to offer though. If you're not interested in just watching the stunts, this movie probably is not for you.  I'm glad that they included things about him getting injured, and there's even footage of one accident where he was almost killed. To not include this would've made sense, but to make the choice to include it was a good idea.

 It was fine. I don't know. There's not much to say about this one. I doubt I would ever tell anyone that I saw this.  Although I will say it made me interested in the real person. I wonder if there's a real movie that was done about this guy? Or if there ever will be? It seems a little late to do a movie about him now. "In 1974, he failed an attempted canyon jump across Snake River Canyon in the Skycycle X-2, a steam-powered rocket". Uhhhh, I wanna see that!! Speaking of, it's interesting to read that he lived until 2007! You would think that the guy who lives this dangerously would've died earlier.

I guess it's another basic, middle of the road 2-ish star movie.