American Flyers (1985) on Netflix
Sports physician Marcus Sommers invites his estranged brother David on a cycling trip to the Rockies, where they enter a grueling mountain race. Marcus conceals his own brain aneurysm.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.5/107,396 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes70%
Trailer
Plot summary
Marcus Sommers has spent years away from his family. He comes home to St. Louis and quarrels with his mother about the way she handled his father's death from a cerebral aneurysm. Marcus brings his brother David back to Madison with him, and their mother fears the same illness may now be affecting David. At Marcus's sports medicine center David takes a test and beats his brother's record. Marcus plays David and Sarah a tape of an earlier Hell of the West race and talks them into driving to Colorado for it. On the road they camp, and David asks whether an aneurysm can be cured. Marcus answers that surgery would damage the brain's vital functions. A hitchhiker named Becky joins them at a McDonald's.
Cast
- Doi Johnsonas Randolph
- John Garberas Belov
- James Terryas Hitchhiker
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about American Flyers (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Cyclist Eddy Merckx makes a brief appearance in the film, starting stage 1, and the character Barry 'The Cannibal' Muzzin, played by Luca Bercovici, was based on Merckx, who was also called 'The Cannibal'.
- Much of the race action was filmed at the Coors Classic, a now-defunct stage race that was one of the USA's leading cycling events at the time. Two stages in the film's featured race, the Morgul-Bismarck circuit in Boulder and the "Tour of the Moon" at Colorado National Monument, were legendary Coors Classic stages.
- ShaverSport, the company that sponsors Marcus and David in The Hell of the West, was an actual company, formed in 1980 by competitive cyclist Bob Shaver to produce quality cycling wear; Warner Brothers asked the firm to design the clothing for the film.
- The 7-Eleven team featured in the movie was a real life team that competed in the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia in the 1980s, and it was later sponsored by Motorola.
- Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac was approached to record a song for the soundtrack, and "Slow Down" was recorded but ultimately not used in the film.
- The main theme "Hell of the West" had a life beyond the movie: ABC Sports played it as the introduction music of the title sequence when it broadcast the International Race of Champions on tape-delay from 1987 to 1997.
