Old-fashioned sports drama given very modern look and feel, mixing 16mm footage with 35mm for an exhilarating visual effect. Robert Redford is quite good portraying an extremely self-assured skier from Idaho Springs, Colorado who is picked as a substitute member on an American team competing in Europe; after a humiliating wipe-out fails to derail his ego, he returns to the States for training with the Winter Olympics just two years away. "Downhill Racer", directed by the debuting Michael Ritchie, is a low-keyed character study masquerading as a sports film--and yet the skiing action is what most viewers end up remembering. The two halves are blended together thanks to punchy editing and the handsome presentation (and by the personalities brought forth by Redford and Gene Hackman as the team's coach), though the macho-subdued screenplay is rather verbose. Once we understand that Redford's David is a self-centered bastard, there's nothing much else to him except his good looks, and the women characters on the scene (there are no female athletes) are sex-objects or uninformed targets for ridicule. A few terrific moments, though the opening credits sequence is really cheesy and Kenyon Hopkins' score is occasionally overwrought. ** from ****