It’s a name that transcends celebrity. In the world of racing, Earnhardt just means more. Nearly a quarter-century after his death, the figure of Dale Earnhardt still looms over the sport, and fans still hold three fingers to the sky in his honor. Earnhardt, a new four-part documentary on Prime Video, takes an in-depth, unsparing look at the man behind the Intimidator persona.
The Gist: Like most successful sports documentaries, Earnhardt works to strike a balance between conversation and action. There’s plenty of the former, including both figures from around his racing career and members of his immediate family, but it’s kept lively through liberal usage of archival racing footage. Between the two, we’re given a solid picture of Dale’s rise from small-time racer to the top of the sport at its moment of cultural ascendancy.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: In terms of recent sports documentaries, the similarly-racing focused Schumacher on Netflix comes to mind. A closer parallel might be Pele, Netflix’s documentary on the soccer great, though, as it portrays an athlete who became a cultural icon in the place he came from. Keeping it in the family, Lost Speedways starred Dale Earnhardt Jr. and ran for two seasons on Peacock earlier this decade.
Performance Worth Watching: There’s a lot to choose from here, with figures from throughout Earnhardt’s life and career showing up, but some of the best commentary comes from his longtime rival Darrell Waltrip.
Memorable Dialogue: The family dramas are so central to Earnhardt, so I’ll use that to pick one quote from a documentary packed-full of memorable lines–one from Richard Childress, Earnhardt’s longtime collaborator on the RCR team. “I knew his dad, I raced against Ralph way back when at Concord and dirt tracks,” Childress recalls. “Ralph Earnhardt was a legend in his own time, he was the guy you had to beat when you went to the racetrack. That’s what Dale wanted to be… I want to be the guy like my dad, when I pull into the racetrack, you know you gotta beat me. He knew where he came from, and he knew he didn’t want to go back there.”
Sex and Skin: The only rubbin’ that’s happening here is racing.
Our Take: Earnhardt starts out the way that, frankly speaking, most sports documentaries start out — a description of the subject’s modest beginnings, their unusual drive to succeed, and the moment in which others started to take notice. For Dale Earnhardt, we get a short intro on his racing career, one that started in the considerable shadow of his father, 1956 Nascar champion Ralph Earnhardt. He’s raised to know nothing but racing, and he makes a name for himself quickly, winning races and scoring major endorsement deals with his “John Wayne in a race car” image.
It’s not long before we take a left turn, though, and we find that Earnhardt isn’t just going to be about the incredible exploits of one of auto racing’s all-time legends; it’s also going to discuss–to borrow a phrase from Wright Thompson–the cost of these dreams. That shift is marked by the appearance of his very-famous son, Dale Earnhardt Jr., reflecting on what childhood was like with The Intimidator as one’s father.
“I remember back then, Dad’s career is starting to take off,” Dale Jr. recalls, “he’d just won the championship in 1980, but during this period we lived with Mom in a mill house in Kannapolis. I don’t remember regular visits. There were times that we were living with Mom that we were seeing Dad, but it was very rare.”
It’s clear that Earnhardt —while not a hit piece on the man by any stretch of the imagination —isn’t going to sugarcoat what the man gave up to get where he was going. “I know that racing was number one,” Dale Jr. recalls, “everything sacrificed to race. But, he ends up getting where he wants to go. He ends up becoming a Cup Series champion in just two years after Mom and his split up. So, in his mind, he was right to sacrifice.”
That father-son drama is quickly put into the context of another, that of the relationship between Dale Sr. and his father Ralph, a champion racer in the formative days of Nascar, one who initially resisted his son’s desire to follow in his tracks. The dramas don’t stop there, though–we learn about Dale Sr.’s quick marriage to Teresa Earnhardt, and the tension that relationship created with his kids. These family dramas aren’t a distraction; they’re necessary color in building the image of the man, and inform how his legendary tough-guy persona took shape.
Of course, it’s nothing without the racing, and there’s plenty of that, too; like the best racers, Earnhardt knows when to pace itself, and when to put the hammer down. Earnhardt really takes off when Dale teams up with Richard Childress for an alliance that would win a string of NASCAR championships and turn the man behind the wheel into one of the most enduring figures in American sports history.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Even if you’re not a hardcore racing fan, the story of Dale Earnhardt Sr. is one of the biggest in American sports history, and Earnhardt does a damned good job of telling it.
Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.