Director: Gabriel Clarke, John McKenna (2015)

There’s a great documentary to made about the making of motor racing film Le Mans (1971), but this isn’t it.

Constructed by Hollywood star Steve McQueen as a float to parade his twin passions of fast cars and movies, the vehicle for his vanity crashed at the box office.

Filming started without a script, the original writer was the first of many fired, the director quit and it went considerably over it’s $6m budget.

John Sturges had helped create McQueen’s career by casting him in The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963).

As a veteran maker of crowd pleasing entertainments for the studios, the director walked off the set, frustrated at McQueen’s truculent refusal to adhere to established Hollywood storytelling.

McQueen’s desire was to represent the reality of the racing experience demonstrates a lack of understanding of Hollywood filmmaking, where emotional truths are revealed through the artifice of the medium.

Understandably upset at the aching slow progress, the studio wrested the steering wheel away from the King of Cool’s control.

The resulting film was a malfunctioning hybrid of approaches and was received with indifference by the public.

Too little technical information or financial detail is offered. We learn the cars are very fast and expensive. But not how much they cost or how many were involved.

There is a vague sense of wanting to rehabilitate McQueen’s reputation from taciturn action star to visionary producer.

But the tone lurches into blokeish banter as his on set infidelities were then covered up but are now leeringly discussed by the crew.

His first wife and their son Chad contribute interviews as do his then gopher, the racing team and the production crew.

McQueen is repeatedly described as being at the time the world’s biggest star.

It’s a description his contemporaries Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Sean Connery or Lee Marvin may have quibbled with.

As the helmet of the actor is lifted, behind the famous and startlingly blue eyes is revealed a deep well of ego.

It’s an oddly deflating experience, leaving us stalled on the starting grid.

★★☆☆☆