Welcome back to my blog. Here’s my recommendation of a movie to check out today and hope you punch your “Ticket to the Movies!” OK, let’s hit the coming-of-age genre in film today with “Breaking Away,” a classic story about a group of hoi polloi in a college town that finds that dealing with life is not only necessary, but a challenge.
With “Breaking Away,” director Peter Yates, who was responsible for the seminal crime drama “Bullitt” with Steve McQueen, weaves a wonderful story about a group of young men struggling to find their identity beyond high school. It is a conflict of local culture and the reaching for something beyond their comfort zone.
You see Dennis Christopher as the spotlight star in a young(ish) cast that also includes Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern and Jackie Earle Haley. The “adults” are Christopher’s on-screen parents played by Paul Dooley and Barbara Barrie.
The cast of “Breaking Away” from 1979 may not be deep in name recognition, but all do a solid job. Christopher is a young man enthralled with bicycle racing (especially a stuck-up, egotistical team from Italy) and he pretends to be Itallian while dabbling on the edges of the university and its culture – something his clique pretends to want to maintain a distance.
Bicycle racing the thread by which Yates links the parts of the story. The term is from a rider getting free of the pack by “breaking away” and is the obvious metaphor for what’s happening to each of the friends.
You won’t be surprised by much with “Breaking Away,” but it is American cinema storytelling at its best. Yates, who was also responsible for the tremendous noir crime drama “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” serves up a big slice of coming-of-age pie
So, I say punch your “Ticket to the Movies!” and watch “Breaking Away.” It is available to rent via several other streaming services. Don’t worry, you’ll thank me later if you watch “Breaking Away.”
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