The Crash Reel

Kevin Pearce was among the best snowboarders in the world and preparing for the 2010 Winter Olympics. In December 2009, training in Utah, he struck his head on the lip of a halfpipe and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. The documentary covers the years before, the accident, and the recovery that followed. Lucy Walker directs. It was released by HBO. Its strongest material is archive. Pearce and his friends had been filming themselves for years, and there are family recordings and competition footage as well. Walker assembles it to build the life before the accident in full detail, and the accident falls into the middle of that accumulation. The real subject is not the crash but what comes after. Once recovered, Pearce wants to ride again; the doctors say a second impact would be fatal. The family gathers and argues, on camera, and that argument is the centre of the film. There is a second line: the rivalry between Pearce and Shaun White, and how the manufacture of risk in extreme sport became an industry. The deaths and injuries of other athletes are shown too. The scene between Pearce and his brother David, who has Down syndrome, is the most cited passage in it. Who it is for: viewers interested in sports documentary and in traumatic brain injury. Who it is not for: the crash footage and the recovery are shown in detail, and the last section runs long.