“One is riding with a broken collar bone, another with a broken coccyx. That’s the Tour de France, it’s too important”. Indeed it is for the hundreds of competitors and millions of spectators for whom the world’s biggest cycling challenge is more than an obsession, it’s a way of life. It also sets the theme for this absorbing documentary by directors Pepe Danquart and Werner Schweizer. They set their cameras on a German team during the 2003 race and it’s this human portrait that gives Hell On Wheels its unique perspective. As the team travels 2500 kilometres up hill and down dale, through rain and shine in their single minded pursuit of victory, Danquart and Schweizer paint an unusual portrait of sporting passion. They eschew the standard documentary set-up and leave seventy years of history largely in the cold – this is about today’s race, today. As cyclists hurtle past like swarming locusts, the film gets lost amid the manic clutter that is the Tour de France, drifting between conversation and cycle crashes. While Hell On Wheels is thin material for two hours, there is still a real pleasure found in the corners of the story: a discarded water bottle that becomes one fan’s trophy or impromptu medical care conducted out of the window of a speeding car. Although it won’t win a yellow shirt, Hell On Wheels is an entertaining and somewhat educational story of addiction, endurance and survival. // COLIN FRASER