Anglophilia on the rampage. The factual story concerns two rival British runners, one a Christian (and a charmer of an actor: Ian Charleson), and the other a Jew, who appear to be heading toward a showdown in the 1924 Olympics until Fate (not always the best plotter) finds a way for both of them to win and creates a somewhat diluted double climax. If the movie is weak where you would expect it to be strong, that is in visualizing the sports action (somehow sports movies almost always succeed in distorting their chosen sport to such an extent that you can no longer tell why they were attracted to the sport in the first place), it is strong where most sports movies -- most movies, really, of any sort -- take no interest at all: the characters' tortured rationalizations for what they do, the Jew running for personal glory, the Christian for the glory of God. Each of these characters has a particularly sharp-edged scene in which they, in their turn, are put at a social disadvantage and then forced to fend off philosophical attack in addition to social awkwardness. With Ben Cross, Ian Holm, John Gielgud, and Lindsay Anderson; directed by Hugh Hudson. (1981) — Duncan Shepherd