wmjbusby I recently came across this movie on an online movie site. As a 30 year veteran of track and field officiating in the US and with at least 35 years experience as a competitor, I thought the movie might be interesting. The plethora of errors about the sport of athletics (track and field in the US) were more than I could tolerate after watching about 30 min. The US relay squads DO NOT practice and run together for years as one British national coach asserted. That is why they fail to finish or are disqualified from so many World Championship and Olympic 4 x 100 meter relay races. The 4 x 200 meter relay is almost never run in international meets as was pictured in the film. At least one, and usually several field events are being contested in the infield during meets. That the infield was conspicuously void of athletes during the meet in Spain seemed to prove that the movie had a very small budget and couldn't afford actors to portray jumpers, vaulters, and throwers, or the writer(s) knew next to nothing about the sport. I won't even try to go into the plot and acting shortcomings.

Garlic_Shred This film really gave me the impression that the creators really didn't know that much about athletics and just made this purely to cash in on the UK's Olympic hype. Fist of all it's implied that the main character is relatively unknown in athletics and springs out of nowhere to become part of the team GB World Championship athletics team. Yeah, that's not really how it works, if she was already getting times that were good enough to be in the running for a team GB place, people would have known about her. She would already have competed in many national competitions and made a name for herself before qualifying for Great Britain.Also the fact that they go on a night out and drink alcohol literally the night before an international competition doesn't make much sense. If that was how the GB team operated in real life, I'd be very worried, therefore it's obviously just a plot device put in place to create conflict failing to reflect any sort of reality.However those are just little gripes. What really brought this film down was the clichéd plot points. We've got the arguments in the team which threaten to stop them winning, the forced romance which breaks down due to a misunderstanding and character arcs like the main character not working well in teams and the rich girl whose father does away with her if she doesn't win. These have all been done before, are executed poorly in this film and lack any depth as we know full well what will happen the moment we see them.They could have included an interesting plot point which connects to athletics, such as the main character being offered performance enhancing drugs or maybe delving deeper into how the main character got into running. But no, you could pretty much put this film's storyline into any sports movie and it would still work. Well, I say work, what I mean is produce the same forced and bland garbage that these kind of films have developed into over the years.All in all, the characters have no chemistry, the film is detached from reality and the plot points are very predictable. Do I really need to tell you what happens in the end? Didn't think so.

rightwingisevil with a very loose Luke-warm screenplay, boring scenario and plot, tasteless dialog and marginal elementary acting of all actors and/or actresses, this movie in general, sucks although still barely watchable. this movie gave me an impression as if watching an African country's athletes fighting their future in track and field careers instead of the British young athletes. sorry, i did have such confusing impression as if i was watching a nowadays' south African track and field movie since the whites were the minority. these female sprinters were a new kind of sports species, they drank, drunk, party all night, white against the black, black against the white, rich against the poor, parents either divorced or separated or one of them disappeared, or both disappeared.....what a sad but over-the-top modern day rich countries' social infra structural tragedy. winning is everything, no matter what. need a sponsor, or many sponsors, otherwise, no gears, no training coach, no future. what a commercialized world.

Braindead09 OK film, that follows a young dedicated black sprint racer as she battles to escape her council estate and become the best in the world. The lead character has no support from any of her friends or immediate family and is also homeless sleeping on couches.Her hardship has to be taken with a pinch of salt, because she appears fit and fed. The only help she receives is from an amateur coach who gives up his early mornings training her on a track that has seen better days with no proper facilities. The aim is to hit a consistent running time of under 23 seconds to qualify for the World Championships being held in London 2011.This aim brings her into conflict with the current UK champion and her father who is high up in the athletics association and will manipulate events for his daughter to always have the upper hand.The story covers familiar ground seen in most sports movies, and pushes home the concept that the only thing holding an individual back is how they deal with adversity and what they can do to break the cycle of their lives. The film deals with race and points the finger of fault at everybody ie if you come from a ghetto you can escape it with a little effort. The film is an enjoyable 100 minutes and the viewer does still root for the lead to achieve her goal no matter how self destructive she is. Its an attractive looking film, and does not claim to be a social documentary.