Whilst Team Must have a few years under our collective belts, we realise some of our younger readers may not have heard of John DeLorean. So, let us explain him in 2021 terms: DeLorean wasn’t dissimilar to the modern-day celeb – a permanent tan and an artificially enhanced jaw, paired up with a fashion model wife, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous and finding any opportunity to talk about how he can’t keep it in his pants.
But he also was an inventor, creating his own car company with manufacturing based in Belfast, providing thousands of jobs to the Troubles torn area.
Almost like a 1970s version of Kim Kardashian, bringing people together one selfie at a time…
This fascinating film recounts the rise and fall of this intriguing figure, through government grants of tens of millions of pounds, a cocaine related FBI sting operation, a tumultuous marriage and his apparent lack of empathy, loyalty and honesty.
We admit, even for those with an invested interest in DeLorean’s life, one hundred minutes is slightly long. The producers would have been much better off making it seventy or eighty, and really focusing on those most peculiar parts of his personality and personal history. But even so, this is a brilliant doc remembering the beguiling businessman.
The Times’s Carol Midgley agrees with us, calling this “a fascinating story, a little too long in the telling,” adding “it was beautifully structured, with a time frame that jumped back and forth between his early life and his heyday.” The Telegraph’s Anita Singh gave it five stars, praising the film which she says “peeled back the layers to reveal what lay beneath the glossy image.” However, she does go on to say: If the film had a tiny fault, it was that we didn’t hear more about the car…but as a study in hubris, it had everything.”
First shown January 2021.
