Wayne (2018) - Movie Review

The plot (such as it is): In the seaside town of Wollongong, New South Wales, Wayne Gardner went halves in buying a run-down motorcycle. This simple purchase started a string of races and championships that would take young Wayne from Australia to a trail-blazing career across Europe. From his close friends to his deepest rivals, we are shown how this Aussie kid became a national icon, not just in sports but in Aussie culture at large.

Since Gardner’s interviews end up narrating and informing a lot of the bigger context for what the film presents, it gives the film a good push out the gate that he is as warm and conversational as he is in those clips. His recollections give an ideal mixture of nostalgia and straight-faced acknowledgement of the trials he went through during the time, adding to the archive footage to give a solid impression that this is a guy whose story is worth telling. To that end, the other main focal point in the interviews is Gardner’s ex-wife Donna-Lee, who provides some outsider perspective at a lot of the crucial narrative moments. What’s more, even considering how their shared story would turn out, she continually brings an equally warm and inviting air to her descriptions of her relationship with Wayne and their mutual elation at his successes… as well as their shared consolation at some of the pitfalls.

From there, we have interviews with family and friends close to Wayne, his mentor Mamoru Moriwaki who gives some pearls of wisdom to add more textual layers to the story, even some of his competitors like U.S. champions Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey, whose respective additions to the work bring some real sportsmanship to the proceedings.

And bringing it all together is director Jeremy Sims, a figure in Aussie filmmaking that it took me a hot minute to realise I had been seeing quite a bit of his efforts over the last several years. From giving standout performances in productions like Ruben Guthrie and Swinging Safari to directing one of the more resonant Aussie features of late with Last Cab To Darwin, this is a guy I should’ve been backing a lot more earnestly than I have… and this production is the clincher for that. In terms of raw biography, he along with producer Matthew Metcalfe and editor Tim Woodhouse show a clear and definite direction as far as how much of the story they are setting out to tell here. As I’ve gotten into in past reviews, the big sticking point with most documentaries is that they try to encompass everything potentially interesting about the subject matter, only for the clutter to allow the real historical gems to shine through.

 

Nothing of the sort to be found here, though, as the combination of interview footage, archive footage, and even a bit of Japanese-inspired animation hit both the high and dour notes of Wayne’s career with equal vigour. We get the main context that gives the events meaning, and the events chosen to be highlighted definitely get across the more intense parts of Wayne’s rise from Wollongong to the world stage.

The depiction we get of Wayne as a person and as a sportsman is one of the daredevil who wanted to blaze a trail in the world by giving it everything he’s got. The general perception that the other interviewees and even Wayne himself has of his mannerisms is that he was reckless, a bit of a flirt in the public eye, and probably pushing himself a little too far to reach his goals. His come-up from riding broken down bikes back home to getting a chance to ride for Honda to his rivalries with other players and even himself; it’s all shown in a fashion that makes the actual race footage feel like the audience is sitting in the bleachers with everyone else. And quite honestly, even as someone with a rather lax attitude to most things involving sports, this can get quite thrilling in how much the races get built up and how easily things could go wrong on the track. Because of this, the moments where Wayne manages to wow everyone and prove that this Aussie nobody has got skills are amazingly cathartic, the kind of reaction that every sports-centric film should aim for.

What makes that reaction even easier to rise to the surface is that the sports of racing itself is given a lot of detail within the film itself, showing it to be more than just taking left turns on a metal bullet for hours at a time. For a start, one of the revelatory aspects that comes out of the interviews with Wayne and the other competitors is that there are elements of the sport that will always terrify them. The way they talk about riding four-cylinder motorcycles, combined with the occasionally wince-inducing crash footage, gives a sense that for as blood-pumping as the activity is, that devil-may-care attitude still had to be tempered by the reality that things could go bad very easily. And not just from the equipment either, as the film also gets into elements of sports psychology and the notion of racers competing with more than just each other’s physical ability.

 

This is where Wayne’s contributions reach a pinnacle, as he goes into his methods in trying to psych out his opponents on the track, while simultaneously using mental visualisations as a means to better understand his goals. Not only that, he also gets into the situations where that psychology applied to himself, recounting how his own fears of falling behind and losing his lead wound up negatively affecting his performance in certain races. It’s an aspect of sports in general that emphasises the smarts that goes into it, further strengthening that choosing to highlight this sport and a key Aussie figure within it was a good move.

That right there, Wayne Gardner being a key Aussie figure, is where the film’s detailing of his rising star begins to take on a more cultural significance. Gardner’s domination of the racing circuit occurred in the late 80’s, around the time that Australia as a whole was starting to make some serious moves to make itself noticed on a global scale. During the timeline of Wayne’s career as shown here, media like Neighbours and Crocodile Dundee were giving Western audiences something of a peek into our cultural aesthetic. We’ll ignore how much that aesthetic has largely remained unchanged in the collective mindset, despite the decades that have passed since. Wayne’s push as a superstar racer, one who was causing quite a commotion in Europe and abroad, is woven into the national tapestry as another product that we as a society put our backing towards… after a time. Much like other cultural cornerstones like AC/DC, Wayne found a lot more initial interest in his career from places other than his home country, something that is only recently becoming less of a societal attitude.

 

What all this adds up to is giving Wayne Gardner pretty much the ultimate reason to have a film like this in his name: He is a sporting legend, one who came to prominence at a time when his country as a whole was starting to do likewise, and his place in our cultural history is one worth preserving.

All in all, it is genuinely refreshing seeing an Aussie feature that is actually worth sitting through for a change. The contributions from the interviewees, from Wayne to his family to his competitors to his ex-wife and friend, all add suitable context to the events, the visuals show a lot of panache in the melding of footage, and the framing courtesy of the director, producers and editor show the exciting parts of Wayne’s rise to fame, highlight the surprising artistry behind the sport and emphasise his place in Australia’s cultural history and how much his success meant for our collective perception on the world stage.  It basically ticks all the boxes for a documentary of this nature, and considering my lack of prior interest in motorcycle racing, I can safely say that this has real entertainment potential even beyond fascination with the sport in question.