Paul Newman, who recently stated he didn't know if there had ever been a great movie about racing, just might be right in his assessment. At any rate, Supercross certainly fails to achieve the goal of presenting quality racing within an entertaining and realistic story. We can't help hoping for a racing film that would showcase the thoughts, dreams, and hopes of the participants as well as how teams themselves work -- but, as in other racing movies, these important elements are lacking here.  

Supercross needed to blend a realistic feel with a proper storyline about the drama behind the scenes so that racing fans could appreciate the danger, thrills, chills and spills. Sadly, the movie comes close to accomplishing that objective only a few times. Accuracy about what life as a racer is like is marred again by a plot going nowhere and characters who, though developed a racers, are undeveloped as people. The movie is nothing more than a carefully scripted publicity campaign for the sport itself. 

Racing movies, as Newman stated recently, either have a great backstory and not so great racing, or it's the other way around. He feels, as do most racing fans, that a really great personal story with great racing sequences has yet to be achieved. The veteran actor, whose team holds five championship titles in the Champ Car World Series, believes that for a racing movie to be successful, the personalities of the characters must be integrated into the story to make it work. Supercross fails in this regard. 

Like Driven and similar movies, this one is a noisy overblown blowout with an engine that explodes all over the screen. Viewers who paid to see a world class racing movie will feel cheated. They'll probably wish they'd hit their local Go-Kart track and raced their bikes for the day.

For racers of any caliber, including Supercross, the stakes are high. For about six months out of every year, their lives are monopolized by the sport -- with time often decided for them. They do not relate with others well, are highly stressed and emotionally, spiritually, morally drained. They are tempted by beautiful blonde bimbos who throw themselves at drivers' feet each week. Drivers never see their family or real girlfriends unless they fly in. On top of it all, the threat of death or injury plagues and causes havoc in their heads. Instead of exploring this side of racing in depth, Supercross merely touches on it. The filmmakers ride the breaks here, never lifting off the clutch and hitting the gas.

Supercross focuses on two brothers, played by Steve Howey and Mike Vogel, who must work together and rise above emotional and physical problems if they are to have any measure of success in Supercross or in life itself. Problems are doubled and tripled in size by their decisions not only to  become Supercross stars but also to race against one another as rivals off and on track.

K.C. Caryle (Howey) is the cautious one while his brother Trip (Vogel) has a ton of talent but makes far too many potentially deadly mistakes. Realizing he has less talent than his brother, K.C. is conflicted when hard-to-come-by  sponsors come through for him with the best bike going while his brother is left out in the cold. A rift develops between the two, and Trip goes it alone unsponsorsed and without a quality ride -- like so many talented real-life drivers. 

(SPOILER ALERT)

The rift continues until Trip suffers a life-altering crash ending his Supercross career. Rather than fighting and backstabing each other, the brothers must now rise above the accident to help K.C. defeat the world's most renowned Supercross champions. 

Instead of plunking down your hard-earned money to see Supercross, why not watch a true racer like Paul Newman in Winning? Now there's a racing movie! And it's available on VHS/DVD. Too bad filmmakers who know only a tiny bit about racing don't show up at tracks to interview drivers and owners. If one doesn't do research and learn all about racing before making a film, why bother? Anything less, like Supercross, is an insult to the racing community and the lives of the participants. 

(Released by 20th Century Fox and rated "PG-13" for language and some sexuality.)