DVD review: Brabham

Having previously read the Tony Davis/Akos Armont Brabham book, I was keen to view the 2019 Brabham documentary film made by Akos Armont hoping it would be as well produced as the excellent “McLaren” film on Jack Brabham’s contemporary, Bruce McLaren. This film was scheduled for theatrical release earlier in the year but COVID has forced it to go the direct to DVD route. Unfortunately, I found this film a  bizarre blend of archival footage, pop culture, weird animation and abstract visuals rather than a traditional motorsport documentary of a 3 times world champion.

The film does trace Sir Jack’s roots through to his retirement via narration and interview commentary from his sons Geoff & David, engineer Ron Tauranac, motorsport writer Doug Nye (who wrote the excellent biography the Jack Brabham Story), Mark Webber, Sir Jackie Stewart, Bernie Ecclestone, John Surtees, John Judd. To be fair, the panel of interviews is actually stellar for an F1 documentary.

The filmmakers have tried to capture a lot of the hurt of Ron Tauranac and son David Brabham in the interviews and while they provide a counterbalance and try to set the record straight – the film doesn’t seem to offer F1 history fans too many deep insights or much archival footage of actual on-track racing during Sir Jack’s F1 career aside from a view key races in the Cooper and Repco-Brabham BT19. There is some good footage of Sir Jack in his UK factory though!

Deliberate gag reel footage of Ron Dennis’ interview session provides some comic relief but a lot of the interviews like the ones with Sir Jackie, Stirling Moss and Bernie Ecclestone seem strained with periods of mute silence. Mark Webber doesn’t actually talk about Jack Brabham at all but rather F1 drivers being like fighter pilots and the challenge of Monaco.

The back end of the movie focuses more on the internal family issues – primarily David Brabham’s stepping outside of his dad’s shadow, hurt of an absent father, fighting court cases to retrieve legal ownership of the Brabham name and crowd funding the production of the Brabham BT62 supercar.

As much as I wanted to like the film, I found it lacked the positivity and celebration of Jack Brabham’s driving and constructor achievements in favour of highlighting his flaws as money or career obsessed over family man.

For fans who are looking for a more pure motorsports documentary, you can probably go for the old Duke video “Champion Jack Brabham”.