Evel Knievel (1971)

best movie i've ever seen.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The legendary daredevil early life's story is told in flash-back. Stars; George Hamilton, Sue Lyon. An interesting film about the very early starting lawless young days of Knievel and girlfriend. This film does not cover much about the famous Evel the news media has shown to the public. A slow film to watch because of the plot and childish action scenes. Hamilton does a good job and casting was spot on. I have to think up more film review sentences. This stupid IMDb database has this ridiculous rule that concise reviewers have to come up with silly wordy and over think their reviews in order of this database keep their reviews to post. This phony posting requirement needs to be reviewed and changed by IMDb staff.

Evel Knievel purports to be a biography of the life of the real Evel Knievel. The movie presents stories and episodes from different periods throughout his life. We see Evel as a young boy in Butte, Montana. We see him grow to become a local hoodlum. We see him meet, date, kidnap, and marry his wife. We see him on his first paying job as a motorcycle daredevil. We see him in the hospital after his horrific crash at Ceasar's Palace. All of this is presented in a series of flashbacks as Evel prepares himself to make a jump over 19 cars.I have no idea how much of what is presented is true. I feel confident, however, that there are quite a few dramatic licenses taken with Evel's life. For example, I sincerely doubt someone could be responsible for two dynamite explosions in the City Hall on the same night and no one notice who was responsible. Don't you think the police might have asked the local dynamite dealer if anyone had recently made a purchase? I sincerely believe Evel would have spent a considerable amount of time in prison if this episode of his life, as presented, were true.The "Tan Man", George Hamilton (who also produced the movie), plays Evel. And while he may bear no resemblance to the real man, he does a decent job copying Evel's walk and speech pattern.While the movie is not great, there are a couple of moments in the film that make it worth watching at least once.

Even though as a kid growing up in the 1970s I thought Evel Knievel was, along with Bruce Lee and Bill Bixby as "The Magician", one of the coolest guys on the planet, I'd for some reason never seen this biopic. Boy, watching this now is a trip! It's a mess of a movie really, but fascinating just the same. Firstly you have the oddball casting of George Hamilton as Knievel. Okay, it maybe isn't as left field as him playing Hank Williams, but it's still very odd. Secondly, Evel comes across as a real idiot, giving long winded egotistical speeches, slamming 'Easy Rider' and those "weirdos" for "giving bike riding a bad name". Thirdly, as an actual biography it's useless. We learn nothing about his life or how he became a stunt rider, let alone WHY he did what he did. Instead you get some utterly preposterous flash backs which include Evel kidnapping his future wife, robbing a store and even City Hall (with dynamite!), making you think you're watching some kind of proto-'Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind'! Hamilton gives a very unnatural, mannered performance, and the supporting cast includes Sue Lyon ('Lolita') as his wife Linda, Bert Freed, who was in everything from 'Paths Of Glory' to 'Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?' to 'Billy Jack', made the same year as this (he's the guy who says "We got the law here, Billy Jack"), plays his long suffering doctor, and Peckinpah regular Dub Taylor has a nice bit towards the beginning as the promoter who gives Evel his first break at a rodeo. 'Evel Knievel' is in many ways an awful movie but 1970s heads will get a kick out of it. You either dig these kind of Drive In exploitation movies or you don't. If you do, check this one out, it's a hoot!

This is really a fun movie. I have no idea if any of it remotely resembles the actual life of motorcycle showman Evel Knievel (I doubt it) but that does nothing to detract from the film. George Hamilton is great as Knievel. Both his performance and the film's script make you care about the character and that alone seperates it from most films. If you get a chance, watch it.