I’ve never been a fan of cricket, but if you asked me for my most respected sporting legends, you’d find Andrew, aka Freddie, Flintoff pretty high up on that list.
I’m a long-time appreciator of the way the former England captain and Sports Personality of the Year winner carries himself – with confidence and commitment to his craft, whether in the game of cricket or as a host of iconic shows like League of their Own and Top Gear.
I’m also a fan of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, the BBC series that sees the star train and tour with a rag-tag cricket team of young men from his hometown of Preston, coaching them through challenges in cricket and life.
But, as was widely publicized at the time, it would be a tragedy on the set of Top Gear that threatened to take all of that away – in 2022, Flintoff crashed while filming a driving segment at an aerodrome, rolling multiple times and dragging his face across bare tarmac. His injuries, recovery, and return to the spotlight were the subject of an intense media frenzy.
In a new Disney+ documentary simply titled Flintoff, BAFTA-award winning documentary filmmaker John Dower follows the eponymous sportsman closely through the struggle of recovery, as well as a renewed battle with the tabloid press – I went to an advance press screening in London to watch the story unfold.
Trial and triumph
The film plays out in Nolan-esque split timelines. It’s split between new footage filmed after the accident and archive material that tells the story of Flintoff’s cricket career – I felt that the film intentionally aimed for balance between the two interlinked stories, perhaps to not overly dramatize the traumatic crash.
Indeed, much of the film is spent in the electric glow of Flintoff’s phenomenal run in the 2000s, peaking with England’s victory over Australia in the 2005 Ashes. I can tell you first hand that you don’t need to know the first thing about cricket to become totally absorbed in the film’s depiction of athleticism and sportsmanship.
With that said, the film does give us perhaps the most clear-sighted look yet at what actually happened that fateful day – I commend Flintoff for allowing the crew to use such detailed imagery and accounts of his injury, even if it may have later contributed to a bit of a rift between the two parties (more on that later).
Interlaced are interviews from Flintoff’s wife, Rachael Flintoff, former cricketing teammates and rivals such as Michael Vaughan and Ricky Ponting, and TV stars like James Corden and Jack Whitehall.
The type of access Dower and company had to Flintoff’s story, and indeed his life, can only be described as intimate – we watch as Flintoff goes to an intense dental reconstruction appointment, as he sits with his father in contemplation of his sporting years, as his wife Rachael recounts preparing their children for the first visit to the hospital.
It’s not just the accident that gets unpacked either – struggles with alcohol, health, and the tabloid press are all here, and I think the filmmakers did well to present these issues through a balanced, human lens.
There are moments of lightness throughout, though. There were laughs in the screening room at some of the wilder escapades depicted, as well as moments of real joy – at one point, Flintoff introduces the guide dog puppy he’d taken in as a foster dog, and I challenge you to find someone who doesn’t crack a beaming smile at that.
I won’t go into detail about how the film wraps up, but I will say that it’s definitively a story of strength and resilience – no wonder it’s one of our seven shows and movies to watch on streaming services this weekend.
A touch of tension?
After the screening, we were joined in the screening room by Flintoff himself, who spoke on the film in conversation with broadcaster and former rugby player Martin Bayfield.
And while Flintoff seemed genuinely grateful to be up on the big screen (and particularly to be on the Disney Plus homepage alongside Star Wars), some of the cricketing star’s comments were a bit harder to parse.
As BroadcastNow reports, Flintoff said the making of the film was “a constant tug of war with production and John [Dower] the director – I don’t know what terms we’re on at the minute.”
Personally, I couldn’t quite tell if this was a direct call-out or another example of Flintoff’s deadpan humor, though Dower, seated directly in front of Flintoff in the front row, didn’t seem too shaken by the remark.
Otherwise, though, Flintoff spoke with the same resolution in person as he did on-screen. In another moment caught by BroadcastNow, he said: “I didn’t want an accident… to be the one thing that defines you and is what you’re remembered for.”
Flintoff is out now on Disney+ – let us know what you think of the documentary and whether it deserves a place in our best Disney+ movies guide in the comments below.
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jamie.richards@futurenet.com (Jamie Richards)
