Anyone who knows anything about anything knows that Steve McQueen is one of, if not the, coolest leading man to ever come out of the Hollywood machine. Richard Martin's feature length documentary film, Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel (based on Marshall Terrill's book of the same name), gives a telling account of McQueen's life and times from his early years through to his later days by exploring many of the changes that he went through along the way until his demise in 1980.

Narrated by Martin with help from the one and only Jacqueline Bissett, the documentary begins, as you would expect, with his early life. We learn about his upbringing and his background before moving on to his early career in front of the camera. His roles in films like The Blob and The Magnificent Seven are covered before moving on to the films he's best known for, like Bullitt and The Getaway. The documentary touches on many other important pictures from his filmography such as The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crowne Affair, Papillon and Junior Bonner (his second outing with Peckinpah) and as his career evolves, so too does his personal life and his outlook. This is what makes Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel more than just a simple career retrospective and what makes it a true biographical portrait.

So while the biographical information and the truth behind the legend of Steve Mc Queen is completely interesting stuff, it's the way that it's relayed to us in this film that makes this film count. McQueen's life and times have been well documented in various film specials and books but Portrait Of An American Rebel has got so much in the way of archival photos and clips and tells so much of the story in McQueen's own words that it goes above and beyond what's been put together about the man's life before. The film covers his time in Marines, his time in Greenwich Village where he was employed as an encyclopedia salesman before getting into acting. He figured he could get government money to use to go to acting school and so he took the chance. Of course, no small amount of attention is paid to McQueen's passions for fast cards and fast women and the real life tough guy details are covered fairly extensively.

From The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery through his relationships with Siegal, from his wrecked rental cars paid for by the studio to Hell Is For Heroes (where McQueen's performance was praised by Kubrick), the documentary does an excellent job of fleshing out the man behind the legend. Small things like his time in Spain and his obsession with bullfighters are covered, as are his idiosyncrasies and the end result is a picture that's as interesting as its subject. Die hard McQueen fans may not get a whole lot more information than they've already gleamed from books and what not but the presentation and the wealth of photos and clips make this essential for anyone with an interest in the man's life and his work.

Comprised of newly recorded interviews and plenty of archival clips from various times throughout McQueen's life, Portrait Of An American Rebel has understandably inconsistent video quality, which is usually par for the course when discussing these types of films. That said, for the most part things look pretty good here on this fullframe presentation. While it's true that plenty of the clips are a little on the grainy side and that a few have some noticeable print damage, everything is perfectly watchable even if it isn't pristine.