The Herald
The Flying Scotsman
Edinburgh Festival: The Flying Scotsman
MILES FIELDER August 14 2006
The good news, given this film's troubled production, is The Flying Scotsman is a winner.
Just as the protagonist of this sports biopic, Scottish cyclist Graeme Obree, had to
overcome personal and professional obstacles in order to win the World Cycling
Championships twice, so too the film's debuting director Douglas Mackinnon had to
wrangle with various financing problems in order to finish his film. It's to Mackinnon and
his cast and crew's credit that they managed that, and moreover that the result is a solid
piece of film-making and a genuine crowd-pleaser.
Obree, for those who don't know, was an amateur enthusiast who in 1993 broke the
world one-hour cycling record. Incredible enough as that athletic feat was, Obree, who
ran a failing bike shop in Prestwick and subsequently paid the bills and supported his
family working as a cycle courier in Glasgow, achieved it riding a race bike that he
designed and built himself – with parts cannibalised from his washing machine. Old
Faithful, as Obree called the bike, allowed the cyclist to adopt a new, more aerodynamic
riding posture and thus shave off those few crucial seconds from each lap around the
velodrome. But Old Faithful brought its designer into conflict with the World Cycling
Federation, whose board members didn't appreciate the lack of commercial opportunities
it presented (i.e. it couldn't be mass-produced and sold to the public) and went to great
lengths to ban Obree from participating in championships.
Mackinnon's film dramatises this underdog story, but it also brings an involving personal
dimension. Obree overcame the physical challenges of this gruelling sport and the
obstacles placed in his way. But what proved to be his undoing were his personal
demons. Haunted by bullying he suffered as a child at school, as an adult Obree suffered
from crippling bouts of depression (there's a nicely realised scene in which Obree
hallucinates that the bullies' full-grown ringleader pays him a deeply creepy home visit).
It's these details that lift the film above the ranks of pedestrian biopic.
Otherwise, The Flying Scotsman is rousing and often very funny. As Obree's eccentric
associate Baxter, Brian Cox generates the lion's share of the laughs. Billy Boyd and
Laura Fraser, playing Obree's pal/manager and his wife, provide sterling support, and
Jonny Lee Miller brings grit (and a fine pair of legs) to the role, crossing the finishing line
a winning leading man.
