Review: ‘Ultimate X’ thrills with spills

Geoff Carter

Friday, May 10, 2002 | 9:07 a.m.

"I've been in a coma and flatlined twice," says one of the daredevils of ESPN's X-Games, in Touchstone Pictures' IMAX documentary of the games, "ESPN's Ultimate X." Such is the tone of this thrill ride of a picture that we're actually a bit envious of the guy's flatlines.

Perfectly paced at just 40 minutes and propelled by a soundtrack ranging from Black Sabbath to Moby, "Ultimate X" is more thrilling than "Spider-Man," and it's as real as falling off a bike.

I remember a few movies similar to "Ultimate X" from the early 1980s -- amateurish films with music by Southern California punk bands and endless sequences of kids on skateboards and dirt bikes, rolling down long hills or up the sides of drained swimming pools. "Ultimate X" follows that formula, but changes the game with stunning camera work that takes advantage of large-format film: You see the skateboarders, dirt bikers, motocross bikers, et al., flying through the air as if shunned by gravity, and you fly with them.

There is a point to all of this, aside from cross-branding (Disney owns both Touchstone and ESPN). The X Games, entering their eighth year, afford respectability to what was -- and still is, to a degree -- a sub-culture of athletes, despite the fact that what they do requires a degree of strength and balance most people just don't have. (The willingness to flatline twice doesn't hurt, either.) These are real athletes, training with significantly less than Olympic funding, and for all its flash and flight, "Ultimate X" portrays them as such.

There's Carey Hart, the motocross rider who can execute backflips. (I can't lift a 200-plus pound bike over my head; can you?) Tony Hawk, the skateboarder who made headlines with a 720-degree aerial spin, repeats the impossible feat for the IMAX cameras. Las Vegas dirt bike rider T.J. Lavin stuns with his lift; the boy doesn't seem to be of this earth, much less Southern Nevada.

This is one case where the intervention of a major studio in the subculture might actually end up doing some good. Skate parks are being closed left and right across America, and the flattering light in which "Ultimate X" bathes so-called "extreme sports" might allow kids to more freely pursue the life they're going to chase anyway.

Hey, if a guy wants head trauma, he should be able to get it. And we should be able to watch and marvel as he catches air, his instrument of launch purely incidental.