GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Dalbert Pringle I, for one, would certainly like to know what director, John Frankenheimer's justification was for this film's absolutely gruelling 3-hour running time. It certainly made no sense to me why this film needed to be so long. No sense, at all.I found that the more background and more personal dramas that were revealed to me about the story's characters only served to make me like them even less.Filmed at various world locations (such as - England, France, Monaco, and the USA) - This $9 million "Gals, Guts & Glory" picture was one of the highest grossing films of 1966.Yes. There was a lot of really exciting, "hard-driving" action in "Grand Prix" (Indeed) - But - IMO - Had this film been edited down to a reasonable 2-hour running time - I probably would have enjoyed it a whole lot more than I inevitably did.

Naught Moses Phil Hill earned every second of the onscreen time he was given here. Because in some respects, "Pete Aaron" =is= Phil Hill, America's first Formula One world champion. The final race in the film at Monza (in '64 for the filming; in '61 in real life) =is= what happened with point leader Hill and runner-up Wolfgang von Trips when Hill won the title. And though Hill never caused any other driver to be seriously injured so far as I know, the years that followed his triumph were troubled when the Ferrari team blew apart, and the ATSs and Coopers her drove thereafter were third-rate. The drama is no better here than it was in "The Racers" with Kirk Douglas in '53, but we do get to see five-time champ Juan Fangio, then current champ Graham Hill, Richie Ginther and others get some well-deserved cameos. That's Graham Hill battling with John Surtees in the terrific opening race scenes at Monte Carlo, btw.

Prismark10 Films dealing with Grand Prix racing have always mis-fired. Some of have tried to be realistic such as Le Mans and ended up boring its audience. Others such as Days of Thunder or Driven have gone more for the crash, bang wallop but been let down with its soap opera plots.Grand Prix tries to do both but its seriously let down by its length which is almost 3 hours, a bland lead in James Garner whose character is underwhelming and the laughably poor romance plotting.The film concentrates on four grand prix drivers. James Garner (Pete Aron) has lost his drive after an accident which severely injures another race driver Brian Bedford (Scott Stoddard) and manages to find a Japanese team whose owner likes his winning mentality. Scott's wife, Jessica Walter walks out on Bedford as she cannot stand his racing attitude and takes up with Garner, a fellow driver which makes little sense.The most effective character is Yves Montand (Jean-Pierre Sarti) the champion racer who has had enough of the dangers of the sport and his sub romance with a magazine journalist, Eva Marie Saint works much better. Antonio Sabato (Nino Barlini) is the young hot shot, a team mate of Sarti and a playboy.The film was made at a time when safety in F1 Grand Prix races belonged to the stone age. Crashes and deaths in races were common. In fact drivers seem to spend a lot of time attending funerals of fellow racers and the film taps into this era hence why Montand looks like veteran who has lost his nerve. Bedford needs help just to get in and out of his car after he comes back from his injuries and needs painkilling injections but still has the need for speed and the ability to win races.Director John Frankenheimer catches the thrill of the racing, some of the machinations of the Grand Prix teams such as Ferrari playing mind games with Montand. The film has real life race drivers in the background such as Graham Hill.James Garner as the main lead, although a capable actor is let down by the script. His character is bland and fails to convince as a leading racer and the romance with Walter looks misconceived. Racing drivers are driven, selfish even while enjoying a playboy lifestyle.It now looks like a film of its time but its not going to be destined as a classic.

Robert J. Maxwell What a spectacle -- these bullet-shaped racing cars shooting ballistically along the straightaways in Monaco and elsewhere, engines buzzing like a swarm of enormous bees, popping from one frequency to another in quantum leaps as the drivers manipulate the clutch in their bowling shoes.Bowling shoes? Well, that's what they look like. We get to see a lot of them, and the driving gloves and helmets and wrenches and nuts that director Frankenheimer made sure to include in order to stage authenticity.The cast is impressive, from James Garner through Yves Montand to Toshiro Mifune. And the LADIES! Elegant blond Eva Marie Saint, stony and sluttish Jessica Walters, and a few glimpses of a stunning young Genevieve Page. Page is being flirted with by a happy-go-lucky young Italian driver. "Drink?" "I don't drink." "Smoke?" "I don't smoke." "Well -- what DO you do?" (She silently looks him up and down.) When you're that lucky, happiness follows as the night the day.Not all the dialog is clever. It has an elliptical quality, as if somebody had gotten Hemingway mixed up with Sartre. The non sequiturs emerge from the script clipped. "The truth is that I don't get lonely." "I don't follow you." "Don't you?" "Do you?" "What is existence?" "Only a pageant of illusions." Well, I made that last part up but you get the flavor.The personal lives of the drivers impinge on their professional activities to varying extents, but so what? If you're into racing, this is your kind of movie. The director steps wrong only a few times, mostly at the beginning, when the screen is filled with multiple images, sometimes of the same shot. It's dizzying, like looking in a store window filled with a hundred TV sets, all tuned to the same channel. But the location shooting is fine. There are no crummy special effects and of course no CGI's. Maurice Jarre has written a pleasant melody for the score.If I were more of an internal adrenalin addict I'd have given it an extra point. It's not at all a stupid movie. We don't have somebody shouting into Tony Curtis' ear, "Take him on the straightaway, Johnny!"