Chariots of Fire (1981)

Today's film is Chariots of Fire, which won Best Picture in 1981.  The only things I knew about this were that it had something to do with running, and it has an awesome theme music.  So, I watched this with my runner daughter.  For a film about running, we expected it to be faster.  It is a slow paced movie.

The two runners we follow are Harold Abrahams, a Jewish runner who runs despite prejudice, and Eric Liddell, who runs to honor God.  At first, they meet at college and train to be great runners.  Later, they qualify for the Olympics.

Dunn  dun dun dun dun dun dun

So, now they're in the Olympics.  However, one of Eric's races is on a Sunday and he says he can't run because it's breaking the Sabbath.  I thought that only applied to work and how is running work? It's called the Olympic games not the Olympic work.  Also I thought Christians didn't do that anymore? I thought that was like an 18th century thing.  He has to go before the council and defend himself, and inspires a lot of people.  But that wouldn't work at a real job.

Harold also works hard at his races, even employing a coach to train him.  The council doesn't like this because a professional coach shouldn't train amateurs.  Which is really interesting because all of the Olympic athletes today have coaches.

One of Eric's teammates agrees to switch races with him so he won't have to run on Sunday.  Meanwhile, everyone goes home with gold medals because this is a sports movie and we expect that.  This film was very educational about a niche in history, but had little entertainment value.  I will give it a 5/10.