Framing John DeLorean movie review (2019)

We see DeLorean himself in archival footage that includes magazine covers, one literally called Success Magazine, as well as the grainy tapes of the sting operation for the drug deal, on the courthouse steps after the jury finds in his favor, being interviewed by Phil Donahue. There is commentary from colleagues, friends, family, his biographer, and others. The saddest are DeLorean’s two children, now adults and still struggling with his legacy. The most charming is Bob Gale, co-screenwriter of “Back to the Future,” who originally planned to have a refrigerator as the time travel vehicle in the film. It was director Robert Zemeckis who came up with the idea of making it the DeLorean, a perfect symbol of quirky but visionary technology.

Baldwin appears as DeLorean, and as himself, an actor trying to create a real-life character. In the make-up chair, with prosthetics being applied to his face, he talks about preparing for the role and asks to see clips of DeLorean at different stages of his life to make sure his performance accurately shows how he changed over time. In the reenactments, "Deadpool"'s Morena Baccarin plays DeLorean’s supermodel third wife, Cristina Ferrare, and “The Good Wife’s” Josh Charles is DeLorean’s colleague Bill Collins, (the real Collins appears on screen himself as well), sharing his story of working with DeLorean at General Motors and going with him to create the famous gull-wing namesake vehicle—until he got pushed out for (correctly) questioning a shady-looking provision in a contract with a new partner. “It’s just paperwork; I’m not a CPA,” says Baldwin-as-DeLorean. As Collins feared, that was another way of saying, “I’m stealing from you and everyone else, bro.”

DeLorean wasn’t about reforming corporate America or making a better car. He was a guy who created an image with plastic surgery and a supermodel wife and a reputation as a rule-breaker, a guy who describes himself with the quote about it’s being better to have loved and lost but misattributes it (it was Tennyson, not Shakespeare).

And then he was a guy who lost it all when he “just perverted some dream that he had,” as one character says. As for the fabulously lavish, 434-acre estate he lost after his bankruptcy filing—it’s now the property of another well-known figure. It became Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf course. DeLorean’s mansion is now the clubhouse.

It is true that no movie can tell the full story of a man’s life. But movies like this one can tell us something important about our own.

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