The Darwin Awards

Movie based on the annual awards honouring those who’ve killed themselves in really idiotic ways in the past year. Michael Burrows (Joseph Fiennes), a zealously curious forensic investigator, is teamed with insurance investigator Siri Taylor (Winona Ryder) in a fascinating journey across the U.S. to try and create a character profile for a typical Darwin Award-winner. The film is a collection of re-enactments of past Darwin winners like the JATO incident in which a former Air Force sergeant strapped a Jet Assisted Take Off unit to his car and fired himself at between 200 and 300mph, into a cliff face. He’d burned out the brakes on his car, taken off for 1.3 miles and impacted with a cliff face 125 feet up, leaving a 3 foot crater in the rockface. This and other belief-beggaring Darwins are re-created lovingly and humorously with an all-star ensemble cast.