ONE of the most thrilling scenes in American cinema comes in ET, when young Elliott and his friends cycle towards the sky - with the benign alien in a basket - on their BMX bikes.

Even though Peter Yates had demonstrated the exciting visual possibilities offered by cycling as a sport in his captivating Breaking Away (1979), there have been almost as few movies on the subject as there have been about golf.

The Flying Scotsman is unlikely to trigger any significant interest in the sport as a movie theme. This Rocky- on-wheels is yet another thoroughly conventional tale

of a stubbornly determined underdog fulfilling his ambition against all the odds. It's based on one of those factual stories that are so much stranger than fiction that they hardly could have been invented.

In a commendably earnest performance, Jonny Lee Miller portrays Graeme Obree, a working-class Scot. In 1993, as his Glasgow bicycle repair shop is failing, Obree resourcefully assembles a more aerodynamic bicycle from scrap metal and washing machine parts. He pedals it so fast and skilfully around an Oslo velodrome that he breaks the world record for cycling the longest distance in an hour.

When Olympics gold medallist Chris Boardman breaks that record a week later, Obree is determined to try again, but he is faced with personal demons in his manic depression, a theme treated quite perfunctorily in the movie. Then he has to contend with professional obstacles placed in his path by the World Cycling Federation, portrayed as snooty, scheming bureaucrats and personified by their sneering German chairman (voraciously scenery-chewing Steven Berkoff).

The screenplay is credited to three writers, among them Irish playwright Declan Hughes, but it has none of the depth or insight of Hughes's notable theatre work, such as Digging with Fire. Some of the cycling sequences are effectively shot from Obree's point of view in the saddle before they turn repetitive.

MICHAEL DWYER